subject of the blood, where is your hope? What is it based on? What are you building your hopes of heaven on? Is it on your good deeds? He says those men that despised Moses's law died without mercy. How much more worthy of punishment shall he be thought who hath trodden under foot the blood of the Son of God, the blood of the covenant? I heard of a man, some time ago, that was going to get into heaven in his own way. He did not believe in the Bible or the love of God, but was going to get in on account of his good deeds. He was very liberal, gave a great deal of money, and he thought the more he gave the better it would be in the other world. I don't, as a general thing, believe in dreams, but sometimes they teach good lessons. Well, this man deamed one night that he was building a ladder to heaven, and he dreamed that every good deed he did it put him one round higher on this ladder, and when he did an extra good deed it put him up a good many rounds; and in his dream he kept going, going up, until at last he got out of sight, and he went on and on doing his good deeds, and the ladder went up higher and higher, until at last he thought he saw it run up to the very throne of God. Then, in his dream, he died, and a mighty Voice came rollling down from above, "He that climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber;" and down came his ladder. And he woke from his sleep and thought, "If I go to heaven I must go some other way." My friends, it is by the way of the blood that we are to get to heaven. If a man has got to pay his way there, only a few can get there. What are you going to do with these poor sick people, who cannot work at all and make money to bestow on others? Are they to be lost and damned? No, thank God! He has made the way so easy and open that the weak and the young, and the smallest and poorest can be saved, if they will. He has made a new and living way right up to the Throne. The despised and persecuted can go up, as well as anybody else. Let me read that again: "He that despised Moses's law died without mercy, under two or three witnesses." That is established. You can go out of the Bible and find that in history.

Now, friends, let me ask you, Where is your hope? How are you going to be saved? If the Bible is true, and I suppose there is hardly one here but believes in it, what are you going to do with that passage that says in Hebrews, "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission?" If you have this blessed gospel of Jesus Christ offered to you, sent to send back the insulting you, and you message that you don't want it, where is your hope? What is your hope? How are you going to be saved? How are you going to escape the condemnation of the law? Now, I have traveled considerably during the last two or three years and have met many ministers; and I have learned that the man who makes much of the blood in his preaching, much of the atonement, and holds up Christ as the

only substitute, God honors his preaching; and the man that covers this glorious truth, there is no power in his preaching. He may draw great crowds, and they may hover around him for a few years; but when he at last goes, the church itself goes down, because it had no power in itself, and their prayer-meetings had no power. The minister would get up a good choir, and a great crowd to hear the music and the fine singing; but when it comes to the real Spirit of power they have not got it. And any religion that takes the blood and covers it up, hasn't any power.

I was in a city in Europe, and a young minister came to me and said: "Moody, what makes the difference between your success in preaching and mine? Either you are right, and I am wrong; or I am right and you are wrong.' Said I: "I don't know what the difference is; for you have heard me, and I have never heard you preach. What is the difference?" Said he: "You make a great deal out of the death of Christ, and I don't make anything out of it. I don't think it has anything to do with it. I preach the life." Said I: "What do you do with this: 'He hath borne our sins in his own body on the tree?" Said he, "I never preached that." Said I: "What do you do with this: 'He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities, and with his stripes we are healed?" Said he, "I never preached that." "Well," said I again, "what do you do with this: Without the shedding of blood there is no remission?" Said he, "I never preached that." I asked him, "What do you preach?" "Well," he says, "I preach a moral essay." Said I: "My friend, if you take the blood out of the Bible, it is all a myth to me." Said he, "I think the whole thing is a sham." "Then," said I, "I advise you to get out of the ministry very quick. I would not preach a sham. If the Bible is untrue, let us stop preaching, and come out at once like men, and fight against it, if it is a sham and untrue; but if these things are true, and Jesus Christ left heaven and came into this world to shed his blood and save sinners, then let us lay hold of it and preach it, in season and out of season." In the college at Princeton this last year, when the students were ready to go forth into the world, the old man, their instructor, would stand up there and say, "Young men, make much of the blood. Young men, make much of the blood!" And I have learned this, that a minister who makes much of the blood and makes much of substitution and holds Christ up as the sinner's only hope, God blesses his preaching. And if the apostles didn't preach that, what did they preach? You take the great doctrine of substitution out of the preaching of Paul, Peter, John, James, and Philip, and of all those holy men, and you take out all that they preached. And so, my friends, there don't seem to be one ray of hope for the man that ignores the blessed, blessed subject of the blood. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission."

It is said of Julian, the great apostate, that when he was trying to stamp out Christianity in the days of Rome's prosperity, before it received Christianity; when he was trying to drive those Christians away, he received a mortal wound, and as he pulled the spear out of his side, he took a handful of the blood that gushed forth from the wound, and threw it toward heaven as he reeled and staggered, crying out, "There, Galilean! Thou has conquered!" We are all conqured, overcome by the blood of the Lamb.

The only way to heaven is by the word of his testimony and his blood. Revelation is full of the subject. It would take days to go through Revelation and see all it contains about blood. The only thing that Christ left down here in the world of his person was his blood. His flesh, his bones, he took away with him; and when he hung there on Calvary, and the blood came out of his hands, and out of his feet, and from his bruised side, and trickled down on the earth, it was never gathered up. It was left there; and God holds the world responsible for it. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to trample it under foot; and send a message to heaven that you don't care for it, that you despise, hate it? Or, are you going to find a refuge and shelter behind it? It is Christ's, shed for the salvation of every soul here within these walls. It is said every man that goes up, goes by the way of the blood. You cannot think about Abel, but you think of the bleeding lamb. So, my friends, the question to-day is, what are we going to do with this subject? I have heard of an English lady who was greatly troubled about her soul, for several months; and the way her conversion was brought about, was this: She told her servant one day to go out and kill a lamb, and told him what to do with all the different parts except the blood; and presently, after he had killed the lamb, he came and asked her, "What shall I do with the blood of the lamb?" And God used it as the arrow that should go down into her soul; and she began to walk her room and ask herself, "What shall I do with the blood of the Son of God?" What are you going to do with that precious blood that flows out of Calvary? Are you going to let it cleanse you from sin? What say you? Will you take it, and by and by stand with your garments made white by the blood of the Lamb, and sing the song of redemption?

During the war, a New York minister, I think it was, came down among the soldiers in the hospital, and preached to them the way to Christ, and helped them in their dying hours. He found one man whose eyes were closed, and who was muttering something about "Blood, blood;" and the old doctor thought he was thinking of the carnage of the battle-field and the blood he had seen there; and going up to him, he tried to divert his mind. But the young man looked up, and said: "Oh, doctor, it was not that that I was thinking of; I was thinking how precious the blood of Christ is to me, now

that I am dying. It covers all my sins." Oh, my friends, the dying hour will come. We are hastening on to death. If Christ is not your all in all, what is to become of you? I was on the Pacific coast, some time ago; and there they were telling me about a stage-driver who had died a little while ago. And you that have been there know that those men who drive those coaches make a good deal of the brake; for they have to keep their feet upon it all the time going down the mountains. And as this poor fellow was breathing his last in his bed, he cried out: "I am on the down grade, and can't reach the brake!" Those were his last words. There was not a stage-driver there, when I was there, but was talking about it. Just about that time, Rev. Alfred Cookman, a very eminent man in our country, was dying, here in New York or New Jersey-a holy man of God, who had lifted the banner of Christ and won many to Christ; and he was passing away in the prime of life. There stood his wife and friends around his bedside, and there was seemingly a heavenly halo around that couch; and just expiring, he said: "I am sweeping through the gates, washed in the blood of the Lamb!" Those were his last words. They live to-day in the nation. I believe they will never be forgotten. Your time will come, and then it will be grand to die with those words upon your lips-"I am sweeping through the gates, washed in the blood of the Lamb."

HEAVEN.

"Our Father, which art in heaven." LUKE 11:2

We have for our subject this evening, heaven. It is not as some talk about heaven, as just the air. I find a good many people now that think there is no heaven, only just here in this world; that this is all the heaven we will ever see. I talked with a man the other day, who said he thought there is nothing to justify us in believing there is any other heaven than that which we are in now. Well, if this is heaven, it is a very strange kind of heaven-this world of sickness, and sorrow, and sin. If he thinks this is really all the heaven we are going to see, he has a queer idea of it. There are three heavens spoken of in the Bible, and the Hebrews acknowledge in their writings three heavens. The first is the aerial-the air, the wind, the air that the birds fly in; that is one heaven. Then, there

is the heaven of the firmament, where the stars are; and then there is the heaven of heavens, where God's throne is and the mansions of the Lord are the mansions of light and peace, the home of the blessed, the home of the Redeemer, where the angels dwell. That is the heaven that we believe in, and the heaven that we want to talk about to-day. We believe it is just as much a place and just as much a city as New York is, and a good deal more; because New York will pass away, and that city will abide forever. It has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. I do not think it is wrong for us to speculate, and think about, and talk about heaven. I was going to meeting once, some time ago, when I was asked by a friend on the way, "What will be the subject of your speech?" I said, "My subject will be heaven." He scowled, and I asked, "Why do you look so?" He said: "I was in hopes you would give us something practical to-night. We cannot know anything about heaven. It is all speculation." Now, all Scripture is given us by the inspiration of God. Some is given for warnings, soine for encouragement. If God did not want to think about heaven and talk about it down here, there would not be so much said about heaven in Scripture. There would not be so many promises about it. If we thought more about those mansions God is preparing for us, we would be thinking more of things above, and less of things of this earth.

I like to locate heaven, and find out all about it I can. I expect to live there through eternity. If I was going to dwell in any place in this country; if I was going to make it my home, I would want to inquire all about the place, about its climate, about what kind of neighbors I was going to have, about the schools for my children, about everything, in fact, that I could learn concerning it. If any of you who are here were going to emigrate, going off to some other country, and I was going to take that for my subject to-night, why, would not all your ears be open to hear what you could learn about it? Would you then be looking around to see who was sitting next you; and who among your acquaintances were here; and what people were thinking about you? You would be all interested in hearing of this country that I was talking about. You could not think anything about the latest fashion, or about some woman's bonnet. If it is true that we are going to spend eternity in another world, and that God is inviting us to spend it with him, shall we not look and listen, and find out where he is, and who is there, and how we are to get there? Soon after I was converted, an infidel got hold of me one day, and he asked me why I looked up when I prayed. He said that heaven was no more above us than below us, that heaven was everywhere. Well, I was greatly bewildered, and the next time I prayed it did seem as though I was praying into the air. His words had sowed the seed. Since then I have not only become better acquainted with the Bible, but I have come to see that heaven is above