12.) and can it be wrong to expect him soon coming in the clouds, with power and great glory ?-Is it folly to look for him, to come the second time, without sin unto salvation?

Then, by the sacrament of the last supper, "show forth his death, till he comes." Then pray as he taught: "Thy kingdom come," in the sense of an old catechism in high repute, which teaches, that in these words we pray, " that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed-and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened." The good Lord hasten it in his time, according to that word: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. and believe the glad tidings.

Bethink yourselves; repent,

It is written in the last chapter of Revelation: "I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star. And the spirit and the bride say, come; and let him that heareth, say come; and let him that is athirst, come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." The Holy Spirit, which is the earnest of our inheritance, and the Elijah of the Second Advent, unites with the faithful church, the Bride, to supplicate the Lord to come. All who hear, are exhorted to unite in the supplication; and all who will, are invited to come and take of the water of salvation, that they may be owned of him at his coming and "He which testifieth these things, saith: Surely, I come quickly.”—“Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

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Though heaven and earth shall pass away."

Daniel has recorded the order of the coming kingdom, in respect to time, fixing it beyond any doubt, in the end of time, and in the eternal state: and he has not concealed the manner of its coming. He plainly represents it, as making a thorough revolution on the face of the whole world, which is explained by the new creation. But Paul is more expli. cit in respect to the manner of the Lord's coming; and he is not obscure to the discerning mind, in respect to the order of the time.

Let one read the description of that coming in the fourth chapter of 1 Thess., and of that wrath, which devours the wicked as stubble before him, contained in the first chapter of 2 Thess., and consider the terrors of the scene, that they belong to the last great day beyond dispute, and to the coming of the Lord Jesus to awake the dead, and to cut off the ungodly race from the face of the earth; and then observe how near Paul brings it home to their heart and time, and to all time; and yet how perfectly indefinite he leaves it. The Bible alone is capable of such infinite precision.

"For this we say unto you, by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord,

For the Lord

shall not prevent them which are asleep. himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we that are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we be ever with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words. But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For you yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord so cometh, as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, PEACE AND SAFETY, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. And I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless, unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thess. 4: 15 to 5: 5, 23.)

No word of peace and safety was ever invented against the doctrine of the sudden coming of the Son of Man, like this of a full thousand years' millennium yet in the world. It is amazing how it deceives the holy men of all nations, while it intoxicates, with the expected delight, the carnal desire of men, to put far away the evil day; and lulls, into a soothing slumber, the warm and devoted apostles themselves, who little dream of the reverses of the night, even before the dawn of the morning. So Peter and James and John, slept, while the Lord was agonising in the garden of Gethsemane. They had deep convictions of peace and safety, and a hope of the promised kingdom in a very few days. Though charged to watch, they were overcome with the fatigues of the day, and with the darkness of the night, and slept soundly; until the torches of the traitor band aroused them to their danger; as the lightning will, which in the last day, shall destroy the son of perdition, and all the workers of iniquity together.

The same coming again is taught with undiminished splendor in the first chapter of 2 Thessalonians.

"That ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God; (v.5,) when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe, (because our testimony among you was believed,) in that day." (2 Thess. 1: 5, 7, 8, 9, 10.)

This is preaching the glorious coming of the Son of man : a doctrine of unequalled power, and of tremendous interest, which is in these days transformed into the doctrine of death -coming. O detestable and impious perversion of the holy word. We often hear men urged now-a-days to repent in the certain prospect of death, which no man can tell is how near: and I am sometimes asked the practical difference of this view of the duty of repentance, from that urged upon mankind, because the king in the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And I reply:

Though to our limited view, there should seem to be no difference in the two forms, one is given, and the other is assumed; and it is only safe to follow strictly the Lord's word, and to preach the preaching that he bids, neither more nor less. Abraham might have assumed to think it was all one to the Lord, whether he offered his son Isaac, or a lamb of the flock; and he could have made a fair show of reason, for the Lord's preferring a lamb : but that would only have argued him out of the title to his inheritance, as father of the faithful: it could not have proved, that it is safer for a man to choose his own ways, or to prefer his own modes of speech, before those which Jehovah has appointed for him.

The Holy Scriptures in no instance, to my recollection, exhort men to repent, in view of the death of the body. They make no great account of the death of the body. They consider it a sleep only; though the world may laugh their doctrine to scorn: they consider it only a sleep, from which all the dead will awake at the resurrection, to the dread realities of the judgment day. They deeply regard the second death; but not the death of the body. They are full of entreaty to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh, to judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom: but they heed not the death of the body; they would not have men heed that particularly; nor even fear them who can only kill the body; but rather him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. The scriptures rejoice in them who "loved not their lives unto the death," (Rev. 12: 11.) and they require us to hate our own life, for Christ's sake, and to surrender the body to the destroyer fearlessly, in the faith of Jesus and the resurrection, which is the kingdom of heaven.

The holy scriptures do not encourage a cowardly spirit, a pusillanimous spirit, and the vulgar fear of death. Bless the Lord, they take away the fear of death, and wipe away the mourner's tear for them who sleep in Jesus. They give the believer assurance, that he shall neither see, nor taste death, in the change of this body to the dust; counting it nothing to be unclothed, in the assurance that he shall be clothed upon, when mortality is swallowed up of life, and this mortal shall have put on immortality. So far from countenancing the base fear of death, the holy scriptures exhort us to "die daily:" (1 Cor. 15: 31.) "as it is written: For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." (Rom. 8: 36.) The holy scriptures teach us to brave death in any form, not even amidst tortures accepting deliverance, to save the life of the