we cannot recal it. The future is not ours. Now is the day of salvation. Let it sweep past, and what an awful awakening must that man's be, whose eyes see the great white throne, and Him on it from whom heaven and earth flee away, and whose only recollection is, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved!" And, my dear friends, God never was more willing to receive you than he is now; and if you were to wait a thousand years, he could not be more willing. The fact is, he looks for you, he longs for you. Only you cannot expect that God will save you as if you were a machine, or an automaton. God did not ruin you: you did it yourselves. God will not save you in spite of yourselves: he will work within you first to will before he works by you to do of his good pleasure. And therefore, remember that if you are saved, it is not against your will. No man goes to heaven with protests in his mouth, and no man goes to hell ignorant of the road he is walking on. We all know much better than we like to give ourselves credit for, where we are, and whither we are going; and it is time that we should well ponder and weigh so solemn and so momentous an issue,- -an issue which cannot be reversed or recalled. You may lose your money, or your health, and recover it; but if you lose your soul, there is no second chance, opening, opportunity or possibility of recovery. Let it not, then, be said of you, "Ye would not;" but this day lift up the heart to Him who waits to shelter "Blessed Jesus, to whom can we come but unto thee?

and you,

say,

Thou hast the

words of eternal life. Lord, we believe: help our unbelief. Thou knowest all things, thou knowest that we cannot love thee as we should; but thou knowest that

we would not part with the little love that burns within us, for all that this world, and twenty worlds besides, contain."

NOTE.-Moses' seat is the office of judge and lawgiver of the people. (See Exodus ii. 13-26; Deut. xvii. 9—13.) The Lord says, "In so far as the Pharisees and Scribes enforce the law and precepts of Moses, obey them; but imitate not their conduct." 'Ekálirav must not be pressed too strongly, as conveying blame : "have seated themselves,"—it is merely stated here as a matter of fact. Verses 8, 10, however, apply to their leadership, as well as their faults; and declare that among Christians there are to be none sitting on the seat of Christ.

[11.] It may serve to show us how little the letter of a precept has to do with its true observance, if we reflect that he who of all the heads of sects has most notably violated this whole command, and caused others to do so, calls himself "Servus servorum Dei."-Alford.

CHAPTER XXIV.

IMPORTANCE OF THIS

CHAPTER JUDEA THE TEMPLE -JEWSAMERICA-THE ABOMINATION.

THE chapter I have read is one of the most solemn and impressive of all the chapters of the New Testament, those of the Apocalypse scarcely excepted. It would take a very long time minutely and critically to illustrate it. I can only give you a mere resumé, or epitome, of the conclusions that have been come to, by careful thought, and by long and elaborate analysis, on the part of the ablest divines, and appeal to that good sense and discernment which every one who reads the Bible, not as a critic, but as a humble Christian, is more or less possessed of. First, in the previous chapter our Lord said, "Your house is left unto you desolate." In this chapter He describes the coming desolation with a graphic and prophetic minuteness, that all history bears abundant testimony to. "Your house is left unto you desolate." Then Palestine is still the house of the Jews. It is unfurnished, it is stripped of its ornaments, its glory, and its beauty; but it is their house still; and the Moslem, the Romanist, the Greek, the Arab, and the Bedouin of the desert, are simply keeping the empty house till the lawful tenant comes in, which he will do right soon.

His disciples then came and pointed out to him the building of the temple, whereupon he pronounced a prophecy the most unlikely he could have uttered in the circumstances in which he was: "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." Some of the stones were fifteen or twenty cubits in length, massive blocks of solid granite, that must have taken very powerful machinery and immense bodies of men to lift and fix in their places. That temple seemed a prophecy of immortality, a pledge of endurance; but Jesus, looking on it-that solitary Man of sorrows, with scarcely a friend in the world, with no power to achieve apparently what he predicted -said, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." Now, it is literally true, that Titus and Vespasian ploughed it up, and removed all its stones; and the only memorial of its ancient magnificence and grandeur is one large block or foundation stone peeping from the ruins, which has been worn smooth by the kisses of Rabbis and Jews who visit Jerusalem, and fulfil that beautiful statement in the Psalms," Thy saints take pleasure in her stones: her very dust is dear to them." I have often thought, what can be the meaning of all this? No Englishman loves his home, no Scotchman loves his country, as a Jew loves Palestine. Why is this? Because it is his home and country; he is a discrowned king, a wearyfooted wanderer, having a heritage before him, and a destiny in prophecy, in comparison of which the grandest estates are worthless; and having a lineage and an ancestry, in comparison of which that of our proudest nobles is but of yesterday.

The disciples then came to Jesus, and asked two

questions. "Tell us, when shall these things be?" that is, the downfal of Jerusalem, the dislocation of all the stones of its temple, and the termination of that grand, but guilty dynasty, which ended twenty years after the birth of our blessed Lord. That is the first question. Then the second is, "What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of"-what is cotemporaneous with it"the end," not "of the world,"—but roû aiŵvos, "of the Christian dispensation."

Our Lord proceeds to answer these two questions; but in answering the first he frequently starts from the local and the national, and depicts the universal, the ultimate and the closing; that is, whilst speaking of the downfal of Jerusalem, he refers by an association of ideas to the downfal of the present dispensation; because what the Jewish dispensation was to the Christian, that the Christian dispensation is to the Millennial reign and kingdom and glory; and there will be a crash at the close of this dispensation vaster, more terrific and startling, than that which took place at the close of that ancient dispensation, which ended nearly 1800 years ago.

Then He said, "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many." This did occur prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. False prophets and pretenders came. One said he was the Holy Spirit. Another said he was the true Christ, and tried to seduce and deceive many by labouring to persuade the Jews that their kingdom would not fall, that some great deliverer would appear, and make it a temporal, perpetual and magnificent dynasty. He says also, "Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be