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kingdom and the greatness of the dominion under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High God. But as a mine, inundated and abandoned, must be emptied of its water ere its hidden ores can be extracted, so the world must unlearn the evil of sin ere it can unlearn the evil of suffering; the power of sin and religious error, falsehood and wickedness, must be exhausted, ere the full capacity of the race for enjoyment, and achievement, and knowledge, here can be exhibited. Mankind must take to the Second Adam, the Lord from Heaven,—the work of wreck and ruin made by the First Adam,-author and inlet of the Fall, in order that the work may be undone and the wrong repaired; ere the curse can be lightened, and society be what reformers and revolutionists wish it, or human nature have its own indistinct yearnings satisfied, and its deep cravings met. The eye and the prayer must be uplifted to Heaven, before it can be well with man on the earth.

4. But, even beyond the Millennium, lies a greater glory and a more awful state. It is the eternal world. And there only will this prayer in its wondrous fulness be granted. Till the grace of God give back the body ransomed from the last trace of corruption and evil,till Heaven receive that earthly framework, renewed and reunited to the sinless and exulting spirit,—the long and widely ascending cry of this petition-a petition going indistinctly up from Nature, and from Society, and with more distinctness from the earthly Church-will not have received its full response. Whilst on earth Christ did not scorn.the relief of bodily

and sensuous miseries, He fed hunger and healed disease. He rescued Peter from drowning, and restored Lazarus from corruption. He preserved Malchus from a permanent maiming, and guarded with his dying breath his own mother from homelessness and want. He provides, then, for lesser mercies; and can remove all lighter as well as the greater evils. In the present state of human existence, however, he leaves many bodily disadvantages and earthly discomforts, which are the results and plagues of moral evil, in order by these to try, and discipline, and perfect his own children. But over this robe of worldly good, thus as yet tattered and scanty, He throws even here the alladorning and perfect vesture of his Imputed Righteousness and Overruling Providence. The day comes when even these lesser evils shall have, also, all disappeared, in the case of his people. And what And what a "Deliverance" will that be, hailed by the jubilant church in the day of the Resurrection and Last Judgment, when the Lamb shall present that church, his bride, to the Father, unblemished and complete in all the radiance of holiness and felicity, and of the immediate and beatific vision, "without spot or wrinkle"-the New Jerusalem-heiress of Heaven and daughter of God.

5. But, on the other hand, if we refuse instruction and continue to dread and deprecate lesser evils, but choose and clasp the greater and fatal evils of sin-if we hate God, and his Christ, and his Book-what must soon be our lot and our remorse? Some, instead of seeking rescue from evil, wish and hope deliverance by it; or, like the Antinomian, abusing the doctrines

of grace, would expect and demand deliverance in sin. But Christ came not to patronize evil but to exterminate it, and to save His people from their sins; not to embalm them in their spiritual death, but to imbue and quicken them with a new and celestial life. То the long litany of deprecation, urged by his penitent and believing people, He has a full and gracious response. But his foes, dying in their sins, and wishing no deliverance FROM evil, are delivered over unto their own wishes, and given up To evil-to the Evil One, merciless and murderous-to their own evil associates, "hateful and hating one another"-and to their own evil recollections, and evil consciences, and evil bickerings, and this for all eternity.

The thought of damnation is one of overpowering terror: but the sinner dreading the award may yet "love damnation in its CAUSES well," whilst recoiling from its consequences. The woes that surround and burden you, are earnests of that dread and desperate state. A few more repulses of the one Sovereign and most benign Redeemer-a few more resortings to the empirical remedies of earth, its self-righteousness, its procrastination, its heresies, its vain amusements, its covetousness, and worldliness-may seal the disease of sin invincibly and irremediably upon you. Did you ever enter the chamber of the dying in his comatose slumber, drawing apoplectic breath, and now dozing to his death? Such, sinner, a little continuance of this present carelessness may render thy state, far as Heaven and eternity are concerned, the repose of a spiritual apoplexy, which shall be past curing.

It seems repose. It is ruin. Cry to the Mighty-cry to the Merciful, whilst there is yet hope of escape and recovery, that He would rid thee of evil-or evil will else rob thee of Heaven, and give thee over to the second death, to the will of Satan, to the tooth of Remorse, and the barbs of Despair, and to the eternal burnings of God's fiery law. "Who can dwell with eternal burnings?" And who, then, shall misspend the one brief term of probation left to escape those fires; who slight the Only Name given under Heaven among men whereby we can be saved?

But, bought with that costly ransom, and upborne to the celestial home on the wings of that mighty deliverance, which the Redeeming Son and the Renewing Spirit accomplish, how blessed will be the spectacle, as surveyed from the heavenly heights,―of the way in which you have been led-of the grace that pursued, and reclaimed, and sustained you-and of Evil now utterly and eternally past. What deliverance can be once compared with this?

"For thine is the kingdam, and the power, and the

glory, forever. Amen."

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