shall be taken, and the other left :" so shall all fellowships be rent asunder but those that meet in God. In the choice of friends, in all great changes and casts in life, let this be your rule. Such is the mysterious action and re-action of moral beings on each other, that no one can say what may be the end of an ill-chosen fellowship. "What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife ?" On one side or the other the power of assimilation must prevail. How often has the earthlier mind drawn away a high and ripening spirit from the fellowship of saints! And O fearful fall which draws others in its ruin! Watch, then, and pray, that you may not only enter into the mystical sanctuary of saints, and go no more out, but gather in also all your loved ones, that there be no parting any more. Though God tarries, yet all things hasten on. Day by day we are nearer our last change. The unseen Church is crying, "How long?" the Church in warfare ceases not continually to pray for the consummation of the elect. And albeit so short, yet this fleeting life to them is as a long and lingering night, which holds off a blessed morrow. Though the time be not yet, nevertheless there are tokens of changes coming on the earth. The shadows

are lengthening out, and the day of its toilsome life is well nigh spent. Oh, when He comes, and the dead are judged, and the names of those that have overcome, which are written in the Lamb's book of life, are read one by one in our ears, how shall our hearts thrill to bursting, while we hear prophets, apostles, martyrs, and saints, bid "come up hither;" and all our loved ones, a friend, a sister, a husband, each in turn called out, and clad in white robes for the marriage-feast! What if we should be left out at last? What if our name be "not found written in the book of life ?" "Enter

not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified."

1 Rev. xx. 15.

SERMON XXIV.

THE WAITING OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH.

1 COR. vii. 29, 30, 31.

"This I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it for the fashion of this world passeth away."

AFTER St. Paul had given to the Church in Corinth many counsels of wisdom and perfection, he brings all his teaching to this end: "Brethren, the time is short." Life is fleeting, and Christ is coming. In whatsoever state ye be, "the Lord is at hand.” The apostles had been taught, by the parables of their Master, to look for Him at any time, as servants for their lord, and virgins for the bridegroom. The angels of His Father, who had received Him with glory into heaven, had bid them look for His coming even as He went away. And therefore they were for ever saying, "We shall not all sleep ;" "We which are alive, and remain unto the coming

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of the Lord, shall not prevent those that are alseep; for the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." Again, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." "The end of all things is at hand; be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. And this habitual expectation chastened and subdued their hearts with awe and gladness; with a faith full of joy, and yet of fear. Their Lord was taken from them; but He was coming again; and the Church of Christ was as a family that had received one great visitation, and is waiting for another. At such a time, all thoughts are absorbed into one; all feelings, all cares, all forecastings; and that one thought and feeling is too great for words. All levity is repressed; all common and unnecessary things suspended cessary duties are tolerable, and they are

an uncommon way. There is a check mind, and a limit to all its movements.

only ne

done in

upon the And men

go about the business of life with a calm and sedate carriage, and meet each other with graver looks; for the one habitual master-thought of their hearts is, the greatness and nearness of God.

And so it was that the Christians of early days

1 1 Thess. iv. 15-17.

3 1 St. Pet. iv. 7.

2 Rom. xiii. 12.

did all things in the Lord: their buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, their weepings and rejoicings, were all measured, and checked, and subdued by the remembrance that "the time is short." They They so lived as they would desire to be found by Him at His coming. There was a twofold process ever going on within them,-the energy of daily life, and the fixed contemplation of Christ's advent. Nevertheless " they were not slothful in business," but "fervent in spirit ;" and for this reason, because they were "serving the Lord:" and yet there was in them a thought which was the centre of all their actings, and gave a steadiness and balance to all their daily life. The ever-present consciousness of their Master's nearness was as some deep undertone which runs through a strain of music, and gives it a staid and solemn spirit.

But if a man should enter the same household once in the hour of its first visitation, and again after a few years or months are gone, how would he find it changed! He would find it, as men say, calmed down, and grown more natural; become itself again, that is, in truth, become commonplace, having reverted, like a spring released from some antagonist pressure. The truth is, they that were so visited were, for a time, above and better than themselves; and while their trial lasted, they