fore the presence of his glory with exceeding joy." By these texts, it is evident that the kingdom presented to the glory of God, the Father, is the mediatorial kingdom of grace, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. 1 Thessalonians iii. 13: "To the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all his saints."

But, says the objector, it is equally evident that Christ destroys death, the last enemy, before he presents his kingdom to God the Father. True; but does he present the wicked to God the Father? We read of no such presenting. Are the wicked in his kingdom at the end, when he gives up the same? No. For at the end he gathers out of his kingdom all that work iniquity or that offend, and they are burned, and this too at his coming and kingdom. Then, if Christ conquers the enemies of his kingdom, raises all the dead saints, and changes all the living saints to immortality and eternal life; has he not fulfilled his promise? Who dare say, Nay? Where has he promised to conquer death for the wicked? Find such a text, if you can. But it is not so: for no sooner do the wicked dead "live again," than they are judged and sent away into the "second death." Then the subject we have been considering resolves itself into the forlowing form:

The reign of grace continues until Christ eaves the mediatorial throne; then the judgment begins, first at the household of faith; the wicked and the proud are gathered and burned, and their bodies are made ashes under the feet of Christ and the saints; Malachi iv. 3: "And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts;" the righteous are raised and caught up to meet the Lord in the air, unto eternal life; they are there judged and justified, before God and the holy angels, and, through righteousness, they are now presented to God the Father without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Thus grace has finished the work; the cap stone, Jesus Christ, is brought in with shouting and grace unto it. The Lord Jesus Christ takes his place as the cap or top stone of the building, which is now become a holy building, compact in every part,-a house not made with hands, but without hands, eternal in the heavens, "unto eternal life." Then will the Father give up the glorified kingdom to the Son of man, and the Lord Jesus Christ become King on the holy hill of Zion, and "God blessed forevermore." He is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us.

This is the kingdom for which we pray; and when this is set up, the will of God will "be done in earth as in heaven."

You may be anxious to know what we understand by "second death." We will now explain.

A second always implies a first; for if there were no first, there could be no second. Again; the second must be, in its general character, like the first. It would not properly be called the second, without a resemblance to the first. Therefore, in order to understand the second, we must have an understanding of the first death.

What constituted the first death which man experienced?

I answer, it was a moral death. Man was created in the image of his Creator; he was pronounced good; a law was given to him, which, if kept inviolate, would secure his happiness and moral life forever, but if disobeyed, would prove his moral death. "For in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." In his primeval state, he was placed in the garden of Eden,—the holy of holies in the new made earth,-where he could hold sweet communion with God, and enjoy intercourse with his Divine Creator. All things on the earth were given into his hands to enjoy, and he was made ruler over them all. He was only prohibited from the use of the tree of knowledge, in the midst of the holy garden of God. To partake of this tree was death. He knew the divine prohibition, he understood the law. No plea of justification could be raised on account of the ignorance of

the law, or the penalty; for the woman says to the serpent, (Genesis iii. 3,) "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." Man disobeyed, and died; he became an enemy to God by wicked works, and a rebel to that being who made him ruler in the dominion of the earth. Man became obnoxious to the divine purity, and was thrust out of the garden, and from the presence of God. His dominion was cast down, and the subjects of man's dominion became rebels to his authority; the earth was cursed, and he that was created lord over all the earth became a vagabond in his own kingdom, and a stranger in his own territory, by a moral death.

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Then, as man rebelled against his Governor, so the subjects of man's government rebelled against man, and natural death, as it is called, became king over all the earth. was the consequence or fruit of man's moral death, by which death reigned over man, and the subjects of man's dominion became the means of man's dissolution and death. The natural world, fire, earth, air and water, are the instruments of death to man. The animal world, from the mastodon to the gnat, may be, and have been, the means of natural death. The mineral contains its poison, and produces death in all living. The vegetable, from the cedar to the hyssop,

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are but so many weapons, in the hands of the king of terrors, to bring men to the dust, and all living to their mother earth. Moral death was the penalty; natural death is the wages or consequences of moral death. Thus the moral death must be first death; for all must agree that the man is morally dead who works sin, and that he cannot obtain the wages of sin until sin dwells in him. Then moral death is the poison which taints the blood and pollutes the mind of man; while natural death preys only upon the body, and reduces the frame to dust. first death is then the penalty of sin. Natural death is the wages of sin, and the.consequence following moral depravity. Man cannot sin without deriving instantly a moral death. Yet man may live six hundred years, and sin all those years, before he dies a natural death. Thus, when man had sinned, he was driven out of Eden and from the presence of God. This was the first death, the wages of which were consequently the separation of soul and body. These deaths, being inseparably connected, are but the stock and fruit of the same tree.

When God saw man thus lost, morally dead, and subject to natural death, he provided a remedy for fallen man against both these evils, by Jesus Christ: from the first, by moral regeneration; from the second, by the resurrection. Let me be understood, then, as believing that these two deaths, as.