not a synod of contentious divines, but a company of redeemed saints. Above all, seal not the sayings that relate to Jesus as the refuge of sinners, the hope of saints: "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world;" "Look unto Jesus;" "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." Let your anchorage-ground be under the shelter of the Rock of ages; set your affections upon things that are above. Watch! the time is at hand

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LECTURE XXI.

THE ETERNITY OF SPIRITUAL CHARACTER.

"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still."-Revelation xxii. 11.

Two great classes are here recognised as standing on the threshold of the age to come; and these alone. There is no mention of any intermediate class beheld by the seer, or hinted even most remotely in the sacred narrative. The whole population of the earth is, there and then, divided into two great classes -disguised and intermingled frequently on earth, but separate and perfectly distinct before the Lord. The features, too, by which they are characterized, are purely moral and spiritual. No conventional distinction survives the grave, or rises either with the first or the last resurrection. There is no mention here of rich and poor, of noble and commoner, of king and subject; for these, which are the glittering and tinsel distinctions of the age that now is, have perished from existence, as earthly, temporary, artificial. Nor is there any recognition of denominational peculiarity on the millennial platform. One would suppose, from reading what is here narrated, that Episcopacy, Presbytery, Independency, Apostolical Succession, Erastianism, and Non-intrusion, had never occurred in the language, or entered into the minds, of any portion of the human family. Not a hint is there given of the existence of sect or system: like thin clouds these petty things are dissolved-like dew-drops shed down in the coldness of the night, they have evaporated before the first ray of the rising Sun of Righteousness. Moral and spiritual elements alone -these only are weighty, and will endure for ever. Let us then examine the epithets that are here given, and the fixity of them in the world to come. "Unjust," does not mean simply dis

honourable conduct in the dealings of the world, nor deliberate purpose not to pay every one his due, nor merely stealing, robbing, and housebreaking: these are crimes of which human laws take cognizance, and which are branded as hateful in the sight of mankind. The highest injustice is that which is committed against the Most High. It is injustice to refuse what he demands; to fail or falter in loving God with all the heart; to refuse to respond to his command, "Give me thy heart;" or to withhold from him, for one moment, one atom of the honour and worship that are eternally his due. Thus you may give every one on earth what you owe him, and emerge triumphantly from every investigation, and gather éclat, and your name be pronounced with eulogy from every class of society, and yet all the while be unjust, criminally unjust, to the highest creditor, to whom you owe, not fifty, but five hundred pence. The next class is described by the epithet "filthy," than which no word can be more expressive of a hateful state before God. Thus it occurs in Job xv. 14-16: "What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?" In Ps. xiv. 3, in that passage quoted by the apostle, it is said of mankind, "They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy." Thus, too, Lot vexed his righteous soul with the filthy conversation of the wicked. Thus, too, the apostle says, "Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit." This is one of those harmonies between the moral and material worlds, which, because of the insensibility of our minds, we are at present barely able to detect. Were our spiritual eye clear with light, we should see in sin all the repulsiveness and offence which the natural eye sees in the most polluted things of the world: yet, conversation and allusions, too justly entitled to this epithet, are tolerated by many, and are the delight of coarse and unsanctified minds. Strange it is, also, a man whose language and life are essentially "filthy," who has ruined unsuspecting innocence, and polluted domestic virtue, pre tends to be, and is even held to be, a "man of honour." Tell him of the wrongs he has done, and the miserable fool will glory

in them. Say something which he calls reflecting on his honour, and he will challenge you to fight a duel.

The decision of the future is the fixture and perpetuity of the tastes and the passions, and impure sympathies and desires, that have been generated in the present. Let the unjust and the filthy, be unjust and filthy still. Let the passions kindled in time, burn and blaze for ever. Let the habits of the present life, in which they sought their satisfaction, be the springs of the miseries which shall torment them for ever. Whatever be the material elements of the future misery of the lost-and these we neither deny nor dispute-it must still be obvious that the main agony is a moral one; that the nature which is stung and wounded, is the soul; that the scourges of it are scorpion passions—which, created here, will be continued there, and with increased intensity and fury; and, having no objects wherewith to satiate them, their explosions, and collisions, and pining after rest, will be the constant facts and the terrible torments of the lost. That remorse which you feel at intervals, gnawing the heart as you recollect some great sin—that revenge, that wrath, that hatred, which some of you feel that fierce lust-that burning shame-that sense of rejected mercy and forfeited happiness, which are occasionally experienced now-shall be then felt in all their bitterness; and the subjects of these terrific passions, thrown together with no mitigating influence amid them, and no restraining law over them, will kindle and keep up a hell, whose agony is feebly described by the fire which is not quenched, and by the worm which dieth not. Thus, the seeds of hell are sown now. As we sow so shall There is an eternal echo to every evil action; and conscience, like a whispering gallery, will send it back multiplied for ever in crashes of thunder, in reverberations of remorse, and righteous retribution. The most silent sin you perpetrate in secrecy now, will make itself heard hereafter. Each parting sin gives up a ghost which will haunt you for ever. lost is just the reproduction for ever of the state The fire which burns perpetually is kindled here. The worm that gnaws and never dies, is quickened here. Hell is not a creature of God; it is that dead and deep, and ever-moaning sea of ill, which is fed by rills of evil from individual souls that have their

we reap.

The state of the of sinners now.

origin and impulse in time. The desires that will never be sated nor cease their frenzy, are nourished and fed here. The drunkard, the voluptuary, the unclean, the unjust, the filthy, feel now in their individual bosoms the presages and the preparations of that dreariness of soul, that dismal sense of wo, that weight of wrath, which will lie upon them a cold and leaden weight for ever. That sin which delights the senses now, is a seed of future agony and remorse, which the stir and amusements of the world will fail to hide for ever. Just as solitary confinement is the most terrible punishment, and the reign of terror the result of the destruction of law; so in the realms of ruin, there will be no curb, nor palliative, nor counteracting element, but each will feel. the concentrated essence of solitude and the surrounding misery of spirits like his own.

We pass over, right gladly, to the obverse of the picture, or the description of the "righteous" that are to be righteous still, and the "holy" that are to be holy still. There is a twofold righteousness to be possessed by man, and both descending from above; viz. imputed and imparted, external and internal: the first the act of Christ, the second the work of the Spirit: the one our perfect title, and the other its accompanying fitness. These two great doctrinal truths are never separated in the practical experience of the people of God. They are twin graces. God has formed, and man may not sever them. There never occurs an instance, in our experience in the church, of a justified man, who is not also more or less, though always progressively So, sanctified. God never justifies any whom he does not sanctify through the truth, and by the Spirit of truth. He never enfranchises any whom he does not qualify for the city of God. The one is the inseparable companion of the other, and the twain. are incapable of dislocation. So truly is this the fact, that we are taught to believe that sanctification of the heart and nature is the truest and most unequivocal proof of the prior existence of justification also. The change of character always follows a change of state. He whose position is altered by Christ Jesus, in relation to God, feels also his nature, and sympathies, and feelings altered by the Holy Spirit of God. "Through the obedience of one, many are made righteous," is the description