be no decay in its verdure--no serpent's trail amid its flowersbut happiness and love, and joy and peace, for a thousand years in the presence of Christ and his saints. Some say, will not this be an earthly heaven? My dear friends, earth is not essentially corrupt: there is nothing sinful in the clods of the valley-nor inherently polluted in a rose, or in a tree, or in a stone. I have seen spots upon the earth so beautiful, that if no clouds of winter would overtake them, nor the sin of man blast them, I could wish to live amid them for ever. Take sin from the earth-the fever that incessantly disturbs it-the cold, freezing shadow that creeps over it-let my Lord and my Saviour plant his throne upon the earth, and his hand wave its consecration, and make it the presence of Christ, and where can there exist a lovelier spot? what fairer land can man desire to live on? would it not be joy unspeakable and full of glory? To me it is heaven where Christ is, whether he be throned upon earth, or reigning amid the splendours of the sky -if I am with him, and he with me, I must enjoy unsullied and perpetual happiness. I have thus, then, given you, not an elaborate exposition of the twentieth chapter, but a short, and, as I conceive to be, a fair and honest outline of its predicted events. It does not become me to attempt to play the prophet. We are only fallible expositors of the word of God. I may have formed wrong conceptions of its symbols. I may, perhaps, have rashly intruded where angels fear to tread. I do not ask you to take my opinion because it seems to be plausible, but to study that blessed book, on the very threshold and vestibule of which are written the inspired and inviting words, "Blessed is he that readeth and understandeth the things that are written in this book." If it be true that the Jews are soon to be restored-within, as I think, a very few years; if it be true, as I have likewise indicated, that twenty years more will introduce some of the last startling phenomena to which I have alluded-for it is remarkable that most prophetic interpreters take the nearest time of the first resurrection to be A. D. 1864, and the remotest time to be A. D. 1885: take the nearest or the remotest, I conclude that, between those bounding periods, the dead saints who are in their graves shall hear the peal of the resurrection trumpet, and the living saints that are on earth shall hear it too, and their hearts shall leap for joy; and the dead in Christ, and they that are alive in Christ, shall meet the Lord in the air, and reign with him a thousand years. Great and solemn crisis, I cannot but again exclaim! One in a family shall be taken, and the other shall be left the mother will be snatched up to the Lord, her son will be left to perish in the flames! The husband will be left, and the wife will be taken. My dear friends, our separations now are but dim shadows of that last terrible one. Oh! fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, in this assembly, if you desire your circles upon earth to be happy, how should you pray that you may be happy together throughout eternity! Mothers, if you wish to meet your babes in glory, teach them to love their Saviour now. Sons and daughters! if you wish to see the gray hairs of your parents amid the throng that surrounds the Lord Jesus, pray for them now. Sunday-school teachers, if you would take those children to heaven with you, and have them for the jewels in your diadem, teach them to love and know their Saviour now. Masters, you are responsible for your servants— servants, for your masters-children, for your parents-parents, for your children-each, for his neighbour. Let each pray and strive, and spend and be spent, that each may meet the other where there shall be no separation-no pain-no sorrow— -but all shall be one for ever with the Lord. I ask you again, each individually, as before God, are you a Christian? My dear friends, here is your unhappy misapprehension. When I bid you be religious, you fancy I am urging you to take some nauseous and unpalatable drug, necessary in order that you may be saved, but which you would rather postpone to the very last moment. In beseeching you to be Christians, I bid you be happy; in inviting you to come to Christ, I invite you to be a partaker of a joy and peace which you have never tasted before. In bidding you be holy, I bid you cease to be miserable, and learn what it is to be instantly and unspeakably happy. I ask you, are you the children of God? Are you Christians indeed? It can be settled. You need not leave it in uncertainty. The man whose heart is Do not leave the question unsettled. changed, and he alone, has settled it. The man whose trust is on the Rock of ages knows that he is so. Examine yourselves. Judge ye. I speak as unto reasonable men. "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new." "If any man believeth not on him, the wrath of God abideth on him." O God, grant that at that day, and that hour, which I have attempted thus darkly to describe, we may be found having our lamps burning and our loins girt, and ready to obey the Saviour's voice, and to rise and reign with Him in glory. He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him. "The Lord shall come, the earth shall quake, The mountains to their centre shake, And, withering from the vault of night, 453 LECTURE XXV. THE SIGNS OF THE SECOND ADVENT. "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame."-Revelation xvi. 15. I THINK I have proved there can be no Millennium upon earth until there burst upon it first a revelation of the light of the Sun of Righteousness. I showed, I think, by texts that are conclusive, that the Millennium is to succeed, not to precede, the Redeemer's second personal coming, and thus to be the reflection of the shining light of the manifested Sun of Righteousness. I adduced the parable which describes the present dispensation of the church as being a mixture of the tares and the wheat together, and showed that this condition of the visible church is to remain till the great harvest-man shall come to sever the tares from the wheat; to preserve the one, and to cast away and everlastingly consume the other. I proved that the advent of Christ, from the chronological views which we have endeavoured to establish in expounding the Apocalypse, must be very near; and I showed you the nature of that advent: He will come, like the lightning, unexpected on a world that looks not for him: "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the day when the Son of man cometh. They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away." And again, it is written, "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" And again, "I come as a thief;" denoting the unexpected and sudden nature of his advent. Now, putting a fair construction upon these passages, I cannot come to the conclusion that there will be first a thousand years of millennial peace, and that at the close of this Millennium, Christ shall come and sit upon his throne and judge the world. On the contrary, I am driven to the conclusion, which I have endeavoured already to express, that the second advent of Christ is the great hope of the Christian church for the future; and as the blessings of the gospel flow from faith in a personal Christ, so all the splendours of the millennium day shall be reflected. from a present personal Christ. I think I see throughout Scripture clearly enunciated two resurrections. These two are stated in the 20th chapter of this book, and that the literal meaning is the true, I think will appear, if you notice a peculiarity in the language of the Apocalypse, which I omitted to refer to, viz. that invariably after St. John had stated some great symbol, he introduces a parenthetic explanation of it, which is of necessity literal. Thus, when he sees seven candlesticks, he appends the explanation of it; the seven candlesticks, i. e. the symbols, are seven churches. The statement, they "are seven churches," is a literal explanation of the symbol, "seven. candlesticks;" so here, when he states that those that had not the mark of the beast shall rise and reign with Christ a thousand years, he adds the explanatory remark, exactly parallel with those cases I have quoted-"This is the first resurrection." This last expression is not a symbol to be further explained by some literal fulfilment, but it is an historical or explanatory statement of a symbol which literally describes the literal fact. But this distinction in the resurrection of the dead is not at all peculiar to the Apocalypse. I find the apostle Paul, as I have stated, saying, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Now, on looking at the English translation, we do not precisely understand the hope of the apostle; for all will attain the resurrection of the dead; the just and the unjust must rise from the dead. Then how could this resurrection be an object of glorious hope to the apostle, as distinct and separate from the hope of the rest of the world? Every scholar, or rather every one that understands the rudiments of the Greek tongue, has only to open his New Testament, and he will find the apostle's language is peculiar and distinct. His words are not Ty ἀνάστασιν τῶν νεκρῶν, but τὴν ἐξανάστασιν εκ τῶν νεκρῶν—which |