theological heresy; still less seldom does it become popular, scarcely ever as the expression of an intellectual process. And so, on the other hand, it is certainly not the fashion for decent people among ourselves to be sensual; rather we take credit for being a domestic nation, not very great drunkards, not fond of war or fighting, or rapine or bloodshed; we are neither cruel nor lustful for the sake of cruelty or lust. War is getting out of fashion; profligacy is in bad taste,—at least to be found out is a great mistake.

It remains then to see whether the character of "the last days" among ourselves may not be a moral one; whether our evils and dangers may not be of a moral kind; whether we may not have adopted false morals; whether we do not mistake virtues for vices, and the reverse; whether we do not call our domestic habits and tempers, our social characters and dispositions, all by wrong names; whether we do not steadily and of a set purpose and resolution go on cultivating bad tempers, and sinful ways, with a resolution and earnestness which would be creditable in the pursuit of Gospel graces and Christian virtues; whether a vast deal of the English moral system is not wrong; whether after all we have not got into quite a habit of persuading ourselves that our irreligion is a sort of religion; our coarseness honesty; our cheating creditable industry in trade; our selfishness honourable emulation; our hatred of strictness freedom from bondage; our utter neglect of religious exercises a protest against superstition; our bigotry godly zeal; our ignorance trust in the Spirit; our national swagger and conceit patriotism; our indif

ference liberalism; and whether we do not disguise our personal hatred of control either by God or man under an exaggerated respect for the merely political maxim of civil and religious liberty all over the world.

I say, upon examination, it may come out that our danger in this country and in these our own times is in a moral direction. And by reading the description of the "perilous times of the last days" immediately following the text-I think that you will see that St. Paul is describing the moral character of Antichrist.

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."

SERMON XVII.

CONVERSION.

ACTs iii. 19, 20.

"Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you."

THE season of Advent directs our thoughts to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with a view to prepare us for the commemoration of His birth on Christmas Day; it leads us to meditate upon the wondrous truth, that He who is the Almighty and Eternal God came down to earth, not to take vengeance on a guilty world, as we might have expected, but on a visit of mercy; not to visit only, and in a spirit of mercy, but, wondrous beyond thought, to incorporate Himself with us wretched sinners; to take on Him human flesh and become one of us, that by the ineffable union of His divine nature with the nature of man, in His own person, He might reconcile our very nature to God, purify it wholly in Himself, suffer the penalty due to its guilt, and then, by taking us into loving union with Himself, afford

to each believer baptized in His name the capacity for attaining, through His imparted life, a meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. On His blessed advent for this purpose, His incarnation, or first coming in the flesh, we are called to meditate at this season, that we may reap its fruits. But it is not on this I mean this evening to dwell.

Again, the correlative truth to that His first advent is His coming again;-that same Jesus, who at His first coming so humbled Himself as to take upon Him the form of a servant, and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross ;-coming in the clouds with power and great glory and all His holy angels with Him, coming to judge the quick and dead. To this too it is the design of this season to direct our thoughts; it is specially set before us in the collect for the first Sunday, in the gospel for the second, in the epistle for the fourth. And a very awful subject of contemplation it is,--one to which sooner or later our thoughts must be directed, whether we will or no. Whether, having availed ourselves of the blessings of His first coming, we can look forward to His coming again with calm trustfulness and hope, or, having disregarded the grace thus offered us, can only contemplate His coming again with fear and dismay, we cannot escape that stupendous subject of contemplation; it will at length be forced upon us, "for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad'." But it is not either to this His

1 2 Cor. v. 10.

Ꭱ

second coming that I purpose more immediately to direct your attention this evening.

There is a third sense in which we must each of us individually have been made ourselves the subjects of Christ's coming, in which He must have made His advent to our own souls, if we are to have true cause for rejoicing in the commemoration of His first coming, if we are to be able to contemplate without dread His coming again in the clouds to judgment. It is His coming in the power of the Holy Ghost into our hearts; His being hailed by each one of us with glad welcome, received and embraced there with our own conscious faith, hailed as our own Redeemer, Mediator, King, to rule in our hearts and over our lives, that every thought may be brought into captivity to Him, every affection gladly yielded to Him, every faculty of soul and body subjected to Him, our whole will, every action of our lives, submitted to and guided by His good pleasure. All our interest in His first coming, all our hopes of acceptance with Him when He comes again, depend on this, that our own souls have thus been turned from the darkness in which they are by nature to hail the light of His rising; from willing subjection to the power of Satan to welcome in Him our God coming to save us, yielding ourselves up to His rule.

It is in this Christ's advent to our own souls individually, in such our welcome given to, our use made of, His advent, that our CONVERSION to God (the subject to which our thoughts are directed in the text I have chosen for our consideration) consists: that conversion of the importance of which we may judge by the manner in which it is spoken of in