Not, surely, our primæval innocence; for "all have sinned;" "there is none righteous, no not one." Not our sufferings; for, in tears, in trials, in martyrdom, in death, there is no atoning virtue. Not our own deeds; for by deeds of law, however excellent and self-sacrificing in themselves, no flesh can be saved. Not baptism; it admits to the visible, not to the spiritual church. Christ alone is that door. "I am the door." the way.

"I am

"No man cometh unto the Father but by me." He is " a new and living way." He satisfied the

exactions of law, bare all the penalties of sin, and removed from between me and my reconciled God every interposing obstruction, and bears me upwards to his presence. It is through Him that we can see or anticipate any thing in the future.

By that door, thus revealed in every page of Christianity, there is the only egress for the love of God. The atonement is not the creation of a love that was not, but purely an egress for a love that was and is-for mercy to forgive, grace to help, and peace to keep us. That door, too, is ingress for us, as well as egress for God. By it, our prayers, our praises, and our souls, may rise and enter into the upper sanctuary, and hold communion with Deity. We enter now by faith; we shall enter by-and-by in fact. They who have already entered have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They now stand before the throne, and serve him day and night; they see the Lamb in the midst of the throne; they celebrate his praise perpetually, and dwell in that glorious land, to delineate the features of which, the seer, in chap. xxi., exhausts all poetry and borrows all imagery, and, after all, helps us to see it only through a glass, darkly.

This way of access is free to all. No toll may be exacted by priest or Pope of any of its pilgrims; it is above all price; it is without money and without price.

It is wide enough for all. You need not try to make room for yourselves by pushing aside your nearest neighbour. None are excluded who do not exclude themselves. None fail who really try. "Strive to enter in," for one day it will be shut to you for ever. Sometimes

God shuts it to some even on earth, as when He says, "He is joined to idols; let him alone." "My Spirit will not strive with him any more."

To all who have not entered by this door in life, it is shut at death for ever. (Matt. xxv. 11-13.) "Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us. But he answered and said, Verily, I say unto you, I know you not. Watch, therefore." And, (Luke xiii. 24.) "Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will strive to enter in, and

shall not be able. When once the Master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord! Lord! open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not, whence ye are."

Have you entered in? Have you crossed that threshold which separates the sons of God from the children of time? Do not postpone this momentous question. Heaven and hell are suspended on the answer. On this side are "the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words;" scenes so awful that the meek Moses could not endure them. But on the other side, to which I invite you, are "Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and an innumerable company of angels, and the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven, and God the Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh." Cross the boundary. Do not hesitate. All heaven welcomes you. Neither earth nor hell can hold back the willing soul.

LECTURE IV.

GOD'S SEALED ONES.

"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

"And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.

"And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

"Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand.

"Of the tribe of Aser were sealed twelve thousand.

Of the tribe

of Nepthalim were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Manasses were sealed twelve thousand.

"Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Issachar were sealed twelve thousand.

"Of the tribe of Zabulon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Joseph were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand.

"After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

"And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

"And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,

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'Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.

"And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes ? and whence came they?

E

"And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

"Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.

"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.

"For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."-REV. vii.

It would appear that soon after the temporary peace that followed the powerful patronage of the truth by Constantine, and even during the sunshine of that unexampled patronage, new and electric clouds were gathering on the horizon of the Roman world, and preparing to explode and devastate the Roman earth. The prey was there, and the eagles were hovering near it. Corruption was in the heart and iniquity stained the hands of the nation, and therefore the denounced and corresponding judgments were converging upon it. And accordingly the vision discloses to us four angels commissioned to restrain the impending storm, or keep back the menaced and deserved judgments, till another angel, according to his mission, seals the servants of the living God, that is, sets them apart, as chosen and precious, and preserves them from the desolations that were about to descend on the unsealed, because guilty ones. Now, in the order of the chronology which we have pursued in our discussion of the meaning of the seals, and in ascertaining what takes place immediately after the opening of the sixth, is there any record of any judgment threatened about this time, and seen to be ready to light upon the empire and scourge its guilty inhabitants? Again we refer to Gibbon, who says, "The threatening tempest of barbarians which so soon subverted the foundation of Roman greatness was still repelled or suspended on the frontiers." This is the language that just translates the apocalyptic symbol. Now these judgments, restrained by the angels, or, as interpreted by Gibbon, "suspended on the frontiers," are embodied and let loose in the sym

bols called the trumpets, which we will explain in our next. But the preliminary question naturally suggests itself, what were the sins or demerits of the Church, now so prosperous, or of the empire, now so dutiful, to all appearance, which provoked so unsparing judgments? All seems tranquillity and peace, and religion throned and visibly triumphant. We shall discover the cause of these judgments partly from history, and partly from the characteristics of the sealed ones, which last, by implication and contrast, reveal to us the errors and apostacies of the Church of Constantine, the peculiar excellencies of the sealed, disclosing the peculiar sins of the unsealed. The truth is, the Church suffered more in the sunshine of the royal countenance than amid the blaze of burning faggots: the persecution of the heathen did not injure her so much as the patronage of the professing Christian. In the one case, she grasped her white robes more closely around her: in the other, and in unsuspecting moments, she let them go. Forgetting that this world was not her rest, she laid aside, in the intoxication of her visible prosperity, her diadem of beauty, her raiment of victory-parted with her eyesight, and put on the livery of Cæsar, and ground at his mill a miserable drudge: and all the seeds of the apostacy, predicted in the Scriptures, and sown broad-cast by Satan in the days of persecution, shot up under the imperial patronage into a disastrous and rapid harvest. After the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, the profession of the gospel became fashionable-it was the religion of the court, the aristocracy, and the higher classes of society-its creed was no longer a loss, but a profit-the principles that once preceded their earnest advocates to prison, to the stake, and to the wild beasts, now paved the pathway to honour, office, and preferment. Christianity, in short, became a qualification for office, a recommendation to Cæsar, a passport to honour. The catacombs in which the early Christians had worshipped in silence and secrecy heretofore, and in which, as recorded by Dr. Maitland, they had left so many inscriptions that demonstrate the primitive character of