into our system, which, whether for weal or woe, shall render us immortal,-shall so strengthen and invigorate us as to enable us to see God and live, to stand beside His footstool, and gaze upon His throne, and yet survive admission into the presence of His Majesty; or, on the other hand, shall so anneal and temper us, that no corrodings of despair within, no intensity of torment without, no gnawing of the worm, no fury of the flame, shall consume us, or destroy us, or wear us out, or render us less sensitive to an extremity of suffering, at the end of millions of ages, than we were in that hour when the first stream of scorching agony gushed through our veins.

We shall be eternal. And would God that that one notion of eternity,-of our being changed into a state which shall be unalterably the same for ever, and for ever, and for ever, could be fully realized to our minds! But alas! we cannot grasp it. We try to seize it, and it flees from us into a dark illimitable abyss, and we are forced to stop and gasp for breath, and in our bewilderment and confusion make no further effort, and so

M

it passes away, and is lost. We speak of the countless number of the stars of heaven, and of the grains of sand on the sea shore, of the leaves which are scattered by the winds of autumn, of the drops of rain which water and make glad the face of the earth. Yet count them one by one, and let each as it is enumerated stand for a thousand, or, if you will, for a thousand times ten thousand millions of years, and when the aggregate of all is summed up, the unit which shall have been taken from eternity will be infinitely less in its amount than the abstraction of one grain of sand from the earth's surface, one drop of water from the unfathomable sea.

And in such an eternity, my brethren, you and I and all of us are to dwell. We must dwell in it, cannot escape from it. We must live in heaven or in hell, with God or with Satan, for ever. And Christ has died for us, has died to save us from hell, and to purchase for us an inheritance in heaven. He has risen from the grave, to be the pledge of our own resurrection. He has ascended up on high to prepare an abode for us among the many mansions of His Father's house.

He has poured His Spirit into our hearts to warn us continually, that life is short, and then comes Death, and then the Judgment, and then Eternity.

To day, then, if ye will will hear His voice harden not your hearts. Grace to repent, strength to obey; grace to bewail the past, strength to redeem the time that yet remains, He still, in His pitiful compassion, will not

deny you.

them now.

Seek them and you shall find
But mark me well. In eternity

it will be too late!

LECTURE VIII.

THE PROPER LESSON CONTINUED.

Christian Stedfastness the Reward of Christian Obedience.

1 CORINTHIANS XV. 58.

"THEREFORE, MY BELOVED BRETHREN, BE YE STEDFAST, UNMOVEABLE, ALWAYS ABOUNDING IN THE WORK OF THE LORD, FORASMUCH AS YE KNOW THAT YOUR LABOUR IS NOT IN VAIN IN THE LORD."

THIS text, so familiar to us, is the form of words in which S. Paul winds up his argument on the subject of the Resurrection of the dead.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ,—by the merits of His Atonement on the Cross,-and by the power of His glorious Resurrection,God our Heavenly Father hath granted to us miserable sinners that which by nature we