us to the character and office of our Saviour, who selected not the synagogues only, but the highways, and the streets, and places of the most public resort as the scenes of his ministerial exhortations. He, therefore, is it, that we now regard as the real Master of the house, who will hereafter shut the door against those who shall knock without having previously rendered themselves worthy of admission. Such as these will then in vain plead that they have enjoyed the society of the Son of God while on earth, that they have been of the number of guests to which he has chosen to attach himself. To such as these he will undoubtedly refuse admittance, when he will likewise reply unto them, “I know you not from whence ye are: depart from

me, all ye workers of iniquity."

And if such will be the reply of the Son of God hereafter if such will be his deportment towards those who, unqualified and unprepared, shall request him to open the door of the kingdom of heaven to them, though their only pretensions to so great a favour are that they personally knew him while on earth, what think you will be his conduct towards those who cannot urge that they have personally known him, though they may assert that, in a different sense from that which we have been contemplating, they have eaten and drunk with him; that they have even partaken of the bread and wine, the sacred symbols of his most blessed body and blood, where and when he has been spiritually present: what, I mean, will be his conduct towards those who can

merely advance such pretensions as these, while their consciences must assure them that though they may have outwardly conformed to the ordinances of the Gospel, they have inwardly and spiritually rejected them by disobeying the whole or the greater part of those divine commands which apply to the internal rather than to the external duties of their religion; to the regulation of the heart and mind, rather than to the conformity of the body with external ceremonies? Be assured, brethren, that a knowledge of your Saviour, in order that it may avail you in the hour of need, must be a knowledge rather of the heart than of the head. It must be such a knowledge as, indeed, implies a disposition to obey the commands of God in every respect, without regard to the fact of their referring to one kind of duty or to another kind of duty. Such a knowledge, I repeat, will alone avail you in the hour of need, for by such a knowledge only can you now, during the time of your probation, become endowed with those qualities in virtue of which, by God's grace preventing and co-operating with you, you will be received as guests at the marriage which shall be hereafter solemnized in Heaven. To plead that you have strictly and sedulously observed all the ordinances of the Gospel; that you have read the Bible; said your prayers both in private and public; regularly partaken of the Supper of the Lord; to plead all this, I say, will be of no avail unless you strenuously and religiously endeavour to do those duties to which these are clearly subservient

and preparatory; unless you love God and love your neighbour in the strictest and most comprehensive sense; unless you repent you of those sins which the best of us too frequently commit; unless you thank God for his unbounded goodness towards you; unless, I mean, you thank him with the heart as well as with the head; not with your lips only, but likewise with your lives; unless you feel within you that you are, and at the best ever will be unworthy and unprofitable servants; and that though saved and made happy hereafter, as we all of us hope to be, yet this can only be effected by the perfect righteousness of Christ Jesus, by whose precious blood-shedding a sinful world have been reconciled unto an offended God.

And if those who perform the outward ordinances of religion; who attend the ordinary services of the church; who partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; who read their Bibles and offer their private supplications to God,, will not be admitted within the gates of heaven: if the knowledge of these will be positively disowned by Christ, unless they do such other things as we have seen to be equally indispensable; what chance do you suppose will those unfortunate and ill-fated beings have, who sin not with the heart only, but with the head also; whose lives and actions are decidedly immoral and sinful, at the same time that they neglect and despise, and even ridicule, the sacred ordinances of our most holy religion? And many-there name is, indeed, legion-many are there of these who, in all proba

bility, I fear, never offer even a prayer unto God in private; who never enter the sacred sanctuary of God's house; who absent themselves from the holy communion for one reason, among many others, that they are ignorant, though, for the most part, wilfully so, that so sacred a rite has ever been instituted by the Saviour of the world. Let me exhort you, brethren, while I likewise entreat you to pray in my behalf, that we may all of us think and meditate upon these things now in the day-time, and not wait till the night season, even the moment of the marriage of Christ with his church, the moment when the light of life shall have been succeeded by the darkness and the dimness of the valley of death. Let us now meditate upon these things, and then, peradventure, by God's help, the gate of heaven may open to us as fit and worthy guests.

And, as a further inducement to meditation upon these important points, and likewise to repentance, in respect of those who without repentance will be hereafter unknown and unrecognised by Christ the Lord and Master of us all, I would recall your attention to the two last verses of our text. In these verses it is the affectionate regard of this kind Lord and Master in our behalf which cautions us against the dreadful result of present disobedience, against the fearful alternative of exclusion from the chamber of the great marriage feast which shall be celebrated in heaven. "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when shall see ye Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the pro

phets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God."

Here, brethren, is an alternative which it is scarcely possible to contemplate without horror and dismay. Instead of being admitted into the splendour of God's kingdom in heaven; to be cast into "outer darkness, in the midst of wailing and lamentation and woe," and to behold the

glorious expanse within filled and tenanted by those, many of whom, while on earth, will have been despised and rejected of men! In one sense, this prophecy has been already fulfilled. It was addressed to the Jews, who have since become outcasts from the church of God, and who may now, and who even do now behold this church, or this kingdom of God on earth occupied by those who, in respect of the Holy Land, have come from the east, west, north, and south. And such fulfilment we may look upon as an earnest of that other fulfilment which was equally intended by our Lord, the rejection of the disobedient, and the admission of the faithful into the interior of God's kingdom in heaven.

As the following words from the Revelation of St. John, addressed to the Apostle by a supernatural voice, are much to our present purpose, I proceed to recite them, by way of conclusion to this discourse: "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.