is the last time." "Now in the end of the world," says another apostle, "he hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."

To my own mind, this is an affecting thought. To have in our hands the last communication of his truth which the God of love will ever make to lost men; to have bequeathed to us the last Will and Testament of the expiring Mediator; to have listened to his voice for the last time until he shall speak with the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God; may well awaken emotions that cannot be uttered, and lead us to feel that all other interests and claims are insignificant compared with the interests of immortal truth and the claims of the Cross. This is the thought that fired the ardent mind of Paul, in one of the most glowing arguments he ever uttered: "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we refuse him that speaketh from heaven whose voice then shook the earth; but now he hath promised, saying, yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken MAY REMAIN." He caught the thought from the lingering notes of the Prophet Haggai, who long before had sung, "For thus saith the Lord of Hosts, yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land, and the Desire of all nations shall come." Now the time had arrived; it was the last mutation, the final revolution in the divine government, until this world should pass away and the elements of which it is composed melt with fervent heat. Already had the voice shook the earth, when Sinai trembled, and Moses introduced the dispensation of the law. But there

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was to be yet one more voice, that should shake not the earth only, but also heaven. It was his "who in time past spake unto the fathers by the Prophets," and who, in these last days, hath spoken to us by his Son." This was the great change, abolishing all former dispensations, itself never to be abolished, but to remain among the things that cannot be shaken. The truth as disclosed from his Cross who was the desire of all nations, is firm as the ordinances of heaven. And now, if any say, "Lo, believe them not. If false

here is Christ, or lo, there!" prophets appear, as they have done in ages past, and are appearing still, claiming new intercourse with heaven and new and further revelations; if they cannot be reclaimed, they must be left to their own idiot dreams and mad delusions. However varied the successes of this dispensation of divine truth, and however great the inequalities that may mark its wondrous progress, there will be no other within the bounds of time. What is last in God's appointment may well be first in our estimation

"The last in nature's course; the first in wisdom's thought."

Men who are saved by this, need no greater, no other salvation; men who are not saved by it, will find no greater, and require no less. "He that is holy shall be holy still; and he that is filthy shall be filthy still."

Such is the truth of the Cross. It must be believed, loved and obeyed. It has no false coloring, no meretricious garb. If you doubt its importance, go and learn it from Gethsemane and Calvary. If you find it hard to be understood, seek light at the feet of its great Author. It has no cold and philosophical abstractions, and no lifeless morality. It is not the mysticism of theory, nor the sentimentalism of feeling, but the truth and love of God coming down upon the soul, and fitting it for Heaven.

Human theories live for a day; the truth of God abideth forever. Men gaze at human theories as they gaze at a meteor when it flashes across the heavens, but leaves no trace of the path it describes; while the light of the Cross is never extinguished, and the mind in contemplating it never becomes weary. It has indeed forbidding features; but it may not be forgotten that those very features which are so repulsive to men who are dead in sin, constitute its most powerful attractions to those whose hearts are right with God.

Allow me then affectionately to inquire at the bosom of the reader, if he loves the truth of the Cross? It is not a vain thing, for it is for your life. "Life and death, the blessing and the curse," are yours, as you fall in, or fall out, with the truth as it is in Jesus.

CHAPTER III.

THE CROSS AN EFFECTIVE PROPITIATION FOR SIN.

MEN must have a religion; and if they reject the religion of the Bible, they will devise one for themselves. What the religion is which they thus devise is not a matter of theory. Facts tell us what it is. The entire narrative of Paganism, both ancient and modern, shows that the religion of the Pagan world is a religion of terror, and that its most important rites and institutions are sustained by its appeals to a guilty conscience. There is that in every human bosom, in virtue of which, every deed of wickedness visits the perpetrator with more or less of the bitterness of compunction. Benighted and erring as it is, conscience everywhere summons man before her bar as a culprit; she tries him, and finds him guilty. The religion of conscience, therefore, is a selfcondemning religion, and its altars are altars of blood. For ages upon ages, blood has been flowing through the temples of heathen idolatry. From the seven nations of Canaan that were cut off by Joshua, to the more bright periods of Assyrian and Egyptian history-from refined Greece and Rome, through the successive ages of Gallic, German and Saxon history, down to the modern nations of the East, men have erected altars to the Sun, to the moon, to the stars; to demons, and hero-gods; to Moloch, Ashtaroth and Baalim; to Juno, to Bacchus, to

Diana, to Woden; whose worship consisted in the most horrid acts of cruelty and blood. The practice of shedding human blood on the altars of idol gods has not been peculiar to any one age of the world. Even at the present day, the car of Juggernaut, and the Pagoda of our own western savages, are stained with the blood of men. This is a remarkable, as well as melancholy fact in the history of our race. Men have no natural instincts to gratify in offering human sacrifices; it is a moral instinct which leads them to it; it is with the view of averting the displeasure of the offended Deity. It is conscience, clamorous for reparation, and demanding amends for human wickedness. Conscience requires obedience, or the penalty of disobedience; nor is it in the power of man to dissolve the wrathful bond. Sin deserves punishment, because it is sin. The connection between crime and suffering is founded in the moral nature of man, and is absolutely indestructible. Conscience establishes it by her immutable sentence that the transgressor is "worthy of death;" reason confirms it by her immutable convictions that God is just; while the history of Divine Providence recognizes it in the perdition of the most exalted race who "kept not their first estate," and in the misery and woes, the sighing, agony and death which reign in a world, originally filled only with expressions of the Creator's goodness.

The demand is not therefore one of minor importance, which is made by the Prophet, "Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, or bow myself before the High God!" It is no easy matter to persuade a man who "is fallen by his iniquity," and who is deeply sensible that he deserves to perish, that there is a refuge from the coming wrath. He may discover some probabilities of pardon; he may indulge some flickering hopes: but