should endeavor to choke and expel from the world its personified light, which was manifested in Christ, and which first impressed the divine seal upon the sentence of individual conscience. Such are the heinous acts for which Judas is preparing himself, although confusedly and half unconscious of what he is doing. The gloomy power to which he has submitted himself, hurries him away in its whirl, and he is no longer able to direct his steps as he pleases.

O Judas, Judas! happy would it have been wert thou the only one of thy kind! But the name of thy brethren, even in the present day, is "Legion." They were not, indeed, at any time thy like-minded apostles; but, like thee, they once inhaled the pure air of the Gospel, and were shone upon, like thee, by the rays of the eternal Morning-Star. They were baptized like thee; they grew up, nourished by the views of divine truth; and on the day of their confirmation devoted themselves, more or less sincerely, in the most solemn manner, to the Lord and his cause. But unfaithful to their sacred vows, they revolted with the inmost tendency of their hearts to the god of this world; and instead of the kingdom of divine light and peace, the idea of another presented itself to their minds, in which the flesh should have its unrestrained and complete gratification. This object they pursued, but the Holy One upon the throne of David, in the power of religion, interposed in the way to its attainment. He requires the crucifixion of the flesh with its affections and lusts; unconditional submission to the divine commands, and unceasing endeavors after godliness. He protects property, sanctifies the marriage state, introduces order into families, condemns revolt, perjury, deceit, uncleanness, intemperance, and every offense against the moral government of the world, as the supporter and advocate of which he appears. And they who would gladly elevate their lusts to be the world's law, feel, more or less, in their consciences, the weight of his requirements as the sting of their condemnation; and without confessing it, are inwardly constrained, even against themselves, to justify the warnings and teachings of Christ's religion, as absolute and irrefutable truth. But this fills them with bitterness, and enkindles in them the infernal spark of enmity against

the Gospel, and against the Lord as its author. Thus they become enemies of God, and join in Satan's colossal attempts to war against the power and majesty of God in the Christian religion, and to bury the whole world of religious and moral sentiments in the gigantic grave of an atheistic materialism, which denies the existence of a future state. They prepare for Jesus the cross of an enthusiast; for his Gospel, the sarcophagus of what they profanely call antiquated ideas; for his whole Church, the stairs of Pilate, on which, in their view, it descends from the scene of reality into a kingdom of shadows; and thus renew the treachery of Judas to his Lord for the wretched reward of an expected state of things, in which, in a short time, every consciousness of a superior fate for mankind would perish by the poisonous nutriment of a base and transitory lust.

Only open your ears, and you will hear from the camp of the world the infernal war-cry, "Away with Jesus and the doctrine of his cross!" Phenomena, such as those which meet us in the present day, were never before seen in the world in such antichristian atrocity and massiveness. The traitor, Judas, is again visible on the stage, full of deadly hatred to God, in a thousand colossal antitypes: and if there is one doctrine of the Holy Scriptures which finds in the present day its tangible confirmation, it is that of the existence of a Ruler of Darkness, and of a kingdom of infernal powers. It is now that the prophetic expression in the Revelations is fulfilled, "The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." The pentecost of hell is being accomplished, and it pours out its spirit over mankind like a shower of fire and brimstone, and its shield-bearers and apostles shoot up from the earth, like the fungus, in a night.

Let every one beware of being baptized with such a baptism! He that does not decide for the Lord to-day, may to-morrow be found opposed to him, and carrying the banner of Satan. Neutrality is a forlorn position. He that enters but half-way into the prevailing tendency of the present day, finishes his course before he is aware and in spite of his best resolutions, in the hatred of Judas, that is in the snare of the devil. And he who reaches

the spirit of the times only the tip of his finger, may rest assured that soon his whole hand will be taken.

Let us therefore hasten to the Lord Jesus, and devote ourselves, with body and soul, unto him as an entire offering, which is but our reasonable service. Recourse to his wounds is still open today, but may perhaps not be so to-morrow. Rise up, therefore, and secure your souls; and pray that you may be preserved from the snares of Satan, and from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the inhabitants of the earth.

IX.

THE WOE DENOUNCED.

WERE any one to ask me what passage in the whole Bible I regarded as the most awful and appalling, I should not require to reflect long before giving him an answer. I should neither refer to the words in Deut. xxvii. 26, "Cursed be every one that continueth not in all the words of this law to do them;" nor to the assertion in John, iii. 36, "He that believeth not the Son of God shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Nor should I call to mind the overwhelming words of the Apostle Paul to Bar-jesus, Acts, xiii. 10, “O full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil!" nor the denunciations of our Lord himself against the Scribes and Pharisees, Matt. xxiii. On the contrary, I would refer the inquirer to the dreadful woe pronounced upon Judas, and feel assured that he would confess that nothing more appalling and awful can be found in the sacred volume, than is contained in the woe which Jesus uttered upon his betrayer. Many a one who has passed unscathed by Sinai, has been compelled by it to cry for mercy with a broken heart.

Listen: "Woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man that he had never been

born!" Who is it that utters these dreadful words? Consider this on the outset, and the words will then begin to unfold their horrors. O that another had uttered them, and not He from whose lips they emanated! O that they had come forth from the mouth of one like ourselves, a mortal, a human prophet, a poor sinner! Room would then have been afforded for a variety of considerations, which might, in some measure, alleviate the dreadful sentence, and we might think ourselves justified in deducting something from its horrible import, and place it to the account of the irascibility of the speaker, or ascribe it to a well-meant intention, by the appalling awfulness of his words, to deter the sinner, if possible, from his impious purpose. But it is Jesus from whose lips the denunciation proceeds; it is the King of Truth, the Friend of Sinners, who utters it; and it is impossible to state what an enormous weight and dreadful emphasis this circumstance alone attaches to the words. For in them we hear not the voice of passion, but the voice of him who could justly say of himself, "I am meek and lowly of heart." It is, therefore, not blind fury, unconscious of what it utters, that raves and rages here, but it is the considerate testimony of One whose own heart bleeds at being obliged to pronounce such a sentence on the man who had been his confidant.

The speaker, in this instance, is one who is not accustomed to deal in exaggerations; but he who thus pronounces sentence, calls himself the "Truth," and is unequaled for modesty of expression and correctness of language. It is no short-sighted person, nor one subject to error like ourselves, who utters these words; but they proceed from the lips of him who is infallible, of whom it is written, that he needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man. Yes, the dreadful anathema is uttered by One, the sphere of whose vision takes in time and eternity, whose spiritual eye pierces through the gloom of the realms of darkness, and before whom, as the future Judge of the living and the dead, the life and fate of every individual, even beyond death and the grave, lies open and exposed. Such is he who testifies concerning Judas Iscariot, "It had been good for that man if he had not been born." This must, therefore, be the case, and that dreadful sentence can not contain

one syllable more than is necessary. O horror of horrors without a parallel! Who does not tremble here as if hell were open before him?

But it may be asked, "Why was he born, if it had been better that he had never been born?" Cease such inquiries, lest they should only increase the awful import of the words. Listen to what the Lord says, "The Son of Man goeth as it is written of him (he fulfills his destiny according to his heavenly Father's counsel and will); but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!"

Observe the Lord's object in these words. He evidently designs to let the whole onus of the betrayal rest wholly upon Judas, as being voluntarily committed by him, and to justify the Almighty, on the contrary, as altogether guiltless of the act, and as in no respect operating to produce it. You may, however, object, and say, "Certainly, we are far from wishing to deny that grace and strength did not stand at the command of the degenerate disciple to withstand Satan, and to enable him to return to the Lord; but the omniscient God foresaw that he would not resist the temptation, but would fall into the snare of the devil, and eternally perish." I reply, that he doubtless foresaw this, and even predicted it by his prophets. "But," say you, "since the Lord knew that it would have been good for that man had he never been born, why did he not prevent his birth? Why did he not hinder the marriage of his parents? Why did he not smite the mother of Judas with barrenness, as he formerly smote Michal? Or why did he not take the babe to himself while in the cradle? Why did he give him time and space to ripen for such a state of reprobation? Why did God do this, since he is Almighty, and love itself?" Restrain such inquiries, my readers. Be satisfied to remain in ignorance. No human spirit fathoms the depths of God's government of the world. To us it is a sealed mystery how the allloving God can suffer men to be born whose course of life he sees, by virtue of his amniscience, will terminate in the abyss of eternal perdition. We can only infer from hence that the unsearchable God must love in a different manner to us men, who have no idea of a love which goes hand in hand with justice. Consider, besides, what would become of liberty, if God were, in