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sweet entertainment for a restless, disquieted soul, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, life, pardon, peace, reconciliation with God, and eternal salvation; and will nourish faith and hope; it will satisfy a barren, empty, perishing mind; and quiet, compose, and becalm an accusing conscience, and gratify it to the highest degree. This lamb was to be roasted with fire: and the faith of a believer sees and feels the curse, the burning ire and smoking jealousy, of a sin-avenging God revealed in a fiery law, poured forth upon the lamb of God, who suffered in the room and stead of his people; so that he is redeemed from the wrath to come, and delivered from going down to the pit, by the life of Christ, laid down a ransom for many. The blood of the lamb was to be put upon the two side-posts, and upon the upper door-post of the houses. Christ does condescend to visit his elect while we dwell in the houses of these our earthly tabernacles, and demands entrance by the everlasting doors of our hearts; and when the King of glory comes in, he not only puts a little sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock, but with this blessed atonement he sprinkles the heart from an evil conscience; which saving benefit being applied, procures his admittance ever after, and makes his company so desirable. This sacrifice was to be eaten with unleavened bread, which Paul says is sincerity and truth. Sincerity is opposed to hypocrisy, and truth to falsehood: hypocrisy, malice, and wickedness, is called old leaven. "And thus

shall ye eat it, with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand." The truth, as it is in Christ, received in the love of it, and with it the love of the truth, or the love that God promises in the word of truth to reveal in us, is, according to Paul, the saint's girdle; "Having your loins girt about with truth." The loins of the mind being girded up keeps from a loose and scandalous profession, and from embracing the damnable lies and heresies that abound in our day. To walk humbly with Christ, and to enjoy peace in him, and in our own conscience, is having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. The staff must be in our hand. Christ, in his office of a shepherd, has his staff; and, as king of Zion, he hath his rod, or sceptre; of which David speaks. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," for I am a sheep of his pasture; "The Lord is my king, working salvation in the midst. of the earth;" and he will magnify this staff by his tender care of me, and shew himself worthy of a right sceptre by destroying my enemies and defending me. "I will fear no evil, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." This staff is the gospel, which is the power of God to salvation, and by which mighty power we are kept through faith. But the lamb must be eaten with bitter herbs; with bitter herbs shall they eat it. These are not palatable, but profitable; they are not intended to fill the belly, but to purge and strengthen the stomach. When bitter trials cease we get lifeless; and when

lifeless, Satan gets little injury, and God gets but little glory. The only remedy against slumbering and sleeping is diligence and watchfulness; for all the time we are diligent our souls gather fatness, and God is glorified, which is what Satan cannot bear. It is when the soul is pressing forward to Jesus that Satan buffets him; and it is when he would do good that evil is present with him. Let his diligence abate, and Satan is undisturbed; let him cease to do good, and the old man will not so strongly annoy him: this brings on slumbering and sleeping, the offence of the cross is ceased.

A worse slaughter than that of Egypt will be made at the midnight cry, I mean among those who will be found in their firstborn state. Let us, therefore, keep the passover and the sprinkling of blood.

Again: Israel was to bide in their houses; and the saint should abide in the house of God, for there the midnight cry will first be made, and there the warning be first given. Once more: At this passover Israel was to begin to reckon time; it was to be the beginning of months unto them; and at the last midnight cry, suffering time, sinning time, the devil's time, and the time of sinners plaguing the saints, will be over; and a whole thousand years complete will take place, and run out, before Satan and his adherents come forth to judgment. They shall all be in prison during this term, while Christ will reign before all the antediluvian and postdiluvian saints, and that in a glori

ous manner: for so it is written: "The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage, and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it shall fall and not rise again. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison; and after many days shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously," Isai. xxiv. 20-23. God grant we may be found among this number. Amen.

THE FOOLISH VIRGINS DESCRIBED.

SERMON II.

MATTHEW xxv. 3.

"They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them."

SOME time ago I gave you a discourse upon the wise virgins, and now I will endeavour to give you a description of the foolish ones, that you may see the difference between them, and judge for yourselves which class you belong to.

Such scriptural accounts of hypocrites as these which describe their setting out in a profession, the name virgin being given to them, their taking their lamps as well as the wise, the shew that they made in their profession, their constant company with the righteous, the length to which they run, and their continuance in their course, even till the midnight cry proclaimed the day of judgment at hand, and even then to awake and begin to trim their lamps, expecting to be admitted into the marriage chamber as well as the others; when, instead of that, they were sent away as workers of

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