destitute of Christianity who thinks there is no worship out of it. Nor is it of Gerizzim, nor Calvary, nor Zion; it is the worship of the only God, in the Spirit, and through Christ. Let us have no creed but truth, no service but love; let God be seen and felt, within us and by us; let him be the Alpha and the Omega of our life; to him let us give the undivided homage of the soul; and having worshipped imperfectly below, we shali be admitted to worship perfectly and perpetually above.

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LECTURE XX.

APOCALYPTIC SAYINGS.

"And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand."-Revelation xxii. 10.

THE command, "Seal not," is equivalent to, Proclaim-as of instant and extraordinary importance, as entitled to special and universal attention, on all occasions and to all men. The solemn issues in which these sayings shall terminate, and as they are appended here, are alone evidence of the duty of publishing abroad, pressing home, and attentively pondering the sayings of this book. These "sayings," unlike those of man, are of so precious a description, and so replete with practical direction, encouragement, warning, that it becomes more and more the duty, as it will be the joy of the minister of Christ, to unfold and enforce them as the time draws nigh. The cross of Christ, the consolations of the gospel, the greatness of a Saviour's love, the fulness of his gracious promises, the duties of the living, the blessedness of the dead, the responsibility of nations, the nearness of the judgment, and the dawn of the approaching sun, are the substance, and the burden, and the sweet music to man's heart, of many of the sayings of this book.

We are called upon not to seal, but boldly to proclaim these sayings, as far as they relate to us as a nation. God speaks to nations, and they must listen. Britain was "the tenth part of the city," or that one of the ten kingdoms which "fell," i. e. separated from the Papacy at the Reformation. This falling was its rise. We do not applaud the morality of the great persons, or the purity of their designs, by whose indirect and undesigned instrumentality this glorious result was precipitated. The licentious purposes of Henry VIII., and his quarrels with the reigning pontiff, not certainly on the score of evangelical religion, were not sanctioned, any more than the sanguinary proscription

of Mary; but overruled by the providence of God to the elevation of Britain as the Pharos of Europe, the grand national witness for Christ, the central missionary of the whole earth. Her retaining this position has been, and will be, her safety and her duty. Her glory has brightened as her protest has become pure; and her separation from the Apostasy has been felt in her experience, and proved in her unrivalled annals, to be separation from misfortune, degradation, and decay. But, alas! one cannot but notice the accumulating signs of approaching surrender of this high and holy position. Good and patriotic men, pained at the calamities of Ireland, and believing that quiet and order are to be secured only through the medium of the priesthood of the vast majority of that people, and by securing the good-will of the sovereign pontiff, propose to grant endowments for the one, and to open up diplomatic intercourse with the other. Step by step, we have been verging to this crowning sin during many years. that are past; and though each step has plunged us into more terrible disasters, yet is the infatuated policy still pursued of attempting to propitiate, by partial concessions, a system whose whole history proves it incapable of satisfaction till absolute supremacy has been secured for its ambitious hierarchy. Each precedent has cried to us at the beginning of the next, Do it not -the very next year has witnessed it done with greater daring. It is our duty to tolerate, but not to endow and thus nationally recognise the Antichristian system. If we shall establish the Papal Church, against which God has spoken so much in his word, in any portion of these realms, or by any grant from our property, we shall then have left our position of strength and safety made good at the glorious Reformation, and have partaken of the sins, and so begun to receive of the plagues that are in store for Babylon. And I believe, that as soon as we shall have identified ourselves as a nation with the mystery of iniquity, the shield over us will be withdrawn, and we shall be sucked into the revolutionary vortex, and share in the ruin with which the ploughshare tears up the continent of Europe. One only wonders that sagacious statesmen, who may not be able to see sacrifice of principle in the endowment of the Papacy, do not foresee how certain of failure such policy must be, and thus how inexpe

dient the measure is. Rome will be satisfied with nothing short of supremacy-she does not disguise it. She takes every inch that is given her, as an instalment; and every new position which our latitudinarianism or hollow expediency yields her, she turns into a platform on which she stands more prominently, and thunders with greater plausibility for yet greater concessions. Her conduct is perfectly consistent with her character; and her policy has been as wise, or rather subtle, as it has been, unhappily, successful. The pope claims to be above Queen Victoria; the tiara never yet suffered itself to be merged in the shadow of the mightiest crown. Papal bulls will attempt again to do what they have done before-supersede the laws of Britain; and a camarilla of cardinals dictate statutes to the parliament of our country.

These sayings are also fraught with instruction to the church, as well as to the country. If the church had maintained its purity, and done its duty, our country had now been placed in a far nobler and more imposing attitude. But in the Church of England, the Tractarian party have surrendered every inch of ground on which we could successfully do battle with Rome. They have done more to give prestige and popularity to the Romish Apostasy during the last ten years, than all the political enactments of Parliament. They have betrayed the citadel, corrupted the faith, and poisoned the springs and streams of the spiritual well-being of thousands; and instead of being excommunicated, as they ought to have been, they have been complimented, flattered, and conciliated, till they stood upon the very verge of ascendency. I blame the Church more than the State-and the ecclesiastical rulers far more than our senators-for the humbled position which we now occupy, and the sad prospects that are too plainly before us, with reference to the future condition of Popery in Ireland.

One cannot fail to see also the progress and growth of a tendency, both in England and Scotland, to identify the claims of the true and spiritual church with those of the visible ecclesiastical corporation to which that name is usually given. Christ is not the head of any one visible church, or of the whole visible church, in the sense in which he is the head of his body, the

church of the first-born. Yet upon this confusion of things perfectly distinct, by good and able men, under temporary delusion, controversies have been kindled, separations created, and occasionally excommunications fulminated worthy of the times of Hildebrand himself. Wherever this confusion prevails, it is only the piety of the individuals, not certainly the principles they avow, which restrains them from developing their church into an Apostasy.

These "sayings" are also addressed to Romanists and Tractarians, of every shade and shape. "If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever." "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues; for her sins have reached unto heaven." This cry has peculiar emphasis now; it is emphatically the warn ing cry of the age. It is thundered in our ears from every nation on the continent of Europe. It is the saying we do well to hear. May God grant that every one that listens to it may hear it, and act upon it!

These sayings in the Apocalypse are addressed to individuals also; to you to me-to us all. Are we sealed by the Spirit of God? Can we say, "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood?" Are we clothed with white robes? have we washed them and made them white in the blood of the Lamb? Have we been taught the new song? Are we redeemed from among men, being the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb? Do we follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth? Do we fear God, and give glory to him? Shall we be among the dead who die in the Lord, and who rest from their labours? Are we the sons of God, and do we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him? Do we look for his appearing? Have we the wedding-garment? Are we among those who are persuaded of the promises, and have embraced them; and confessed that we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth, desiring a better country, that is, an heavenly?

"The time," it is added, "is at hand." What time? The