am authorized, in his name, to proclaim, through faith in him, a full, free, glorious pardon to the very chief of sinners. If you refuse it, you have yourselves alone to blame you seal to yourselves your own condemnation.

Such are some of the aggravations of the sinner's danger, from the suddenness of coming judgment.

I proceed

III. To the inferential observations I proposed to make.

1. We must suffer no frivolous objections to weaken in our minds the force of this truth. It has been said, for instance, that many generations of men have passed away, since that to whom especially the

warnings of my text, about our Lord's

coming, were addressed, and yet the judgment is not come. How, it is urged, is

I

this fact to be reconciled with the repeated assurances of the nearness of his approach? and does it not prove to us that we need be in no such immediate expectation? reply, that the scripture expression-" the coming of the Lord," intends, not one or two events merely, but, more generally, any remarkable interference of God's power, most frequently for the infliction of judgThis may, I think, without difficulty be proved, as I will endeavour to show by a few quotations. In "the burden of Egypt," we read, "Behold, the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall

ment.

come into Egypt; and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it*," which prediction was accomplished, in the anarchy which prevailed in Egypt after the destruction of Sennacherib's army, in the conquest of that country by Nebuchadnezzar, and in the cruel sway which he and his successors, and afterwards the Persian kings, held over the wretched inhabitants. Again, our Lord says, "Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here, who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." I cannot believe the interpretation proposed, that this prophecy was + Matt. xvi. 28.

* Is. xix. 1.

fulfilled in our Lord's transfiguration, which certain of the disciples beheld, would ever have been seriously thought of, had it not been to prop up a system. The common-sense explanation is, as appears to me, that Christ referred to the destruction of Jerusalem. Further, when St. Paul writes, "Let your moderation be known unto all men: the Lord is at hand *" it is not likely that he meant, either the final consummation of all things, for he could not be ignorant that that was many ages distant; or even the destruction of Jerusalem, for it is not easy to see what peculiar visitation of the Philippian church would result from that event. He doubt

* Phil. iv. 4.

less intended" that hour of temptation," which was coming "upon all the world, to try them that dwelt upon the earth;" that sharp persecution, which would sift them, and prove their faith, wherein many should attain the crown of martyrdom, and should thus have the strongest proof, that the present life was vanishing, and its distinctions not worth craving. Neither can a personal coming be predicted in the passage, "Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh*." And once more, in the epistles to the Asiatic churches, we read, "I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou

* James, v. 8.