and the carnality of man! It retains every doctrine of the gospel only to subvert it; it keeps the name only to cover its hostility to the cause of Christ. "God is love;" and under this glorious banner it has built inquisitions, evangelized with the sword, and deluged the earth with blood. "God is light;" and under the beams of this it has hallowed ignorance as the mother of devotion. "My kingdom is not of this world;" and with these words sounding in her ears she has built up an ecclesiastical despotism—a pyramid of power and grandeur-a throne of pride, on which she sits as a queen, and says, "I shall see no sorrow.'

So many and so ceaseless forces have conspired against the kingdom of Christ, that we are constrained to infer that the existence of a church on earth is the result of the sovereignty of Christ. The spiritual church survives, a spark on the sea, a flower amid frosts, an exotic in an alien soil. Had it been human, it had perished long ago. Its existence is its eloquent ascription, "Thou art the King of glory, O Christ."

From the experience of the past, as well as from the promises of Scripture, we gather the assurance of the safety of the people of God.

Their palladium is not the shadow of a throne; their shield is neither their own riches nor the state's endowments. Their shield is Christ on his throne, their girdle is the everlasting arms, their glory their Redeemer's crown. Dynasties change, and empires ebb, and races die, and kings oppose, and enslave, and protect the visible church; but Christians live, and love, and flourish.

The prosperity of the church is not what the world calls so― numbers, wealth, extension-but increase of spirituality and love, new and noble victories over sin, greater sacrifices for Christ's sake, yet more fearless recognition of his name and assertion of his truth. The church of God is often most prosperous when she has least in her coffers, fewest in her temples, and nothing but hostility in the world.

We are sure of the ultimate triumphs of the church of Christ, just because on his head are many crowns. Greater is he that is for us than all that can be against us; the predictions of its success are as sure as if already turned to performances. All forces

shall aid his cause, all tongues shall praise him, every hill-top and every hidden valley shall shine in the lustre of his crown. To achieve this, the ministers of Christ need not call in the militia of Cæsar, a bishop need not assume the command of a battalion of infantry, nor a cardinal charge at the head of a company of dragoons. Christ repudiates as auxiliaries alike the bribe of the treasury, the bayonet of the army, and the craft and subtlety of the world. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." Are you subjects of Christ? Are you believers in him? Are you Christ's? Is he yours?

LECTURE II.

THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD.

"And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."-Revelation xiv. 13.

I HAVE already unfolded several features of the family of God. I showed you the state of the one hundred and forty-four thousand-the sealed ones-true Christians in the sight of God: "they are without fault before the throne of God;" that is, "there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus;" they are "justified" by him, and have "peace with God." "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth." They "have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Next, I described their practical conduct upon earth; or the mode in which they visibly develop, in their intercourse with the world, those great Christian principles which they had received through grace: they "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." They follow him in the great aim and end of his life-in his appeal to the only standard of truth, the word of God-in his intercourse with the world, sympathizing with him in all his sorrows, and reflecting all his joys. You have thus, then, the state of Christians before God: "without fault before the throne;" you have, next, the practical course before men: they "follow the Lamb."

Having thus read their biography in life, let us read and comment upon the epitaph upon their tombstones. Their state is justification before God; their practical character is following the Lamb; and the beautiful epitaph which may be inscribed upon

See Lecture IV. of the Exeter Hall series, where the above also was delivered.

their tomb, and pronounced as the noblest requiem over the ashes of the dead, is-"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." I allow there is here a special reference to the first resurrection, and I believe the blessedness to be associated primarily with their relation to this great event; but its main truths are not affected by chronology-they are always true.

Let us consider, first, those that are described as "the dead;" secondly, their peculiar and distinctive relationship-"the dead in Christ;" thirdly, the benediction pronounced upon them"blessed are the dead;" fourthly, the special reason of that blessedness" they rest from their labours;" and lastly, the evidence of their entrance into that blessedness-"their works do follow them." Let me endeavour, as fully as the time will permit, to lay before you some remarks upon each of these several divisions into which I have split the text, dwelling rather on its general than on its special prophetic bearing.

Where are they not?

"The dead." Where are they? My dear friends, has the thought ever struck you, in looking round the world, that its dead outnumber its living? A far greater amount of the population of the globe is beneath the soil, than there is at any moment treading and breathing above it. Our churches, our homes, our thrones, the theatres and playhouses of the world, are all built upon the dust and ashes of the dead. Our cornfields and vineyards wave above the soil that was once warm with life: "the toe of the dancer treads upon the ashes of the dead."

"Where is the dust that hath not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors:
From human mould we reap our daily bread.
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sons;

O'er devastation we blind revels keep:

Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel."

This great globe on which we dwell seems to be as much a sarcophagus of the dead as it is a home of the living. What are all its graves, but various compartments in this one great and

silent mausoleum! The ashes of Abraham mingle somewhere with those of Martin Luther; and that of Martin Luther may mingle somewhere with those of Napoleon; and the dust of Napoleon may, in a few years, mingle with the dust of a far better man that has recently passed from the stage of life to the stage of glory-Thomas Chalmers. Thus the world is a vast sarcophagus; its graves are its chambers, or compartments; and those compartments are not able to prevent the dust of all from mingling together.

But not only the remains of those who never had a quarrel— who lived in friendship, and died in peace-but of those who were sworn and implacable foes, by a great law must mingle and blend most peacefully together. The ashes of Martin Luther and of Leo the Tenth, who hated him so heartily—the dust of Wickliffe and that of those who cast his body into the stream which bore it to the silent sea-the dust of John Knox and that of Queen Mary, must blend and lie right silently and peacefully together. Thus, not only the dust of friends, but of bitter foes, as if to cast reproach upon their feuds, must blend and mingle together in spite of all their repulsions.

It is now dead-disintegrated-mingling with all streams— mixing with all elements-blown by all winds; yet there is not a particle of that dust, incorporated with trees, mingled with the sea, or buried in the earth, that shall not hear the first tone of the resurrection trumpet, and become instinct with a life that can never end; for, when the trumpet shall sound, each one that died, whether he died in Christ or not, shall, each in his own order, come forth. Some shall rise from the depths of the fathomless sea, and come; some shall cast off their only windingsheet, the sands of the desert, and come. The Pharaohs shall leap forth, when they hear that peal, from their pyramidal chambers; the Ptolemies shall start from beneath their marble monuments; Napoleon, and those who fought and fell beneath his banner at Jena, at Austerlitz, and at Waterloo, shall rise and gather in shivering crowds around him; the dust of Martin Luther shall be quickened at Wirtemberg, and put on the apparel suited to a citizen of the New Jerusalem; Calvin shall rise from his grave, which is now unknown; Oberlin and Felix Neff shall