ing, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. . . . But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." So in 2 Thessalonians ii., antichrist will reach his culminating greatness, and be rooted up only in his full strength and pride by Christ personally appearing. Then, next will occur the manifestation and the glory of the sons of God. The tares shall be rooted out, removed, and cast into everlasting fire. The wheat will not be removed: it will remain in greater purity, and shine forth in richer magnificence and beauty, in the field in which it was sown. The scene of their progress will be the scene of their manifestation. According to Romans viii. 18, the sons of God will emerge from the chaos and confusion under which they are buried in this world. Their life, now hid with Christ in God, shall be unvailed; the shadow that eclipses them shall be rolled off, and the glory of heaven breaking out shall cover the whole earth, and what is written in Daniel xii. 3 shall be fulfilled: "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as stars for ever and ever." This shall be literally brought to pass.

Christ's true church and the visible church are not coextensive, or to be confounded, the one with the other. All the man-baptized are not the God-baptized. The worst of errors originates from identifying the two. Assume the vissible church, i. e. the tares and the wheat, to be the true church, the company of the regenerate, and then apply to it, as you may justly, if it be so, the glorious endowments and attributes of the inner and the spiritual church,

and there will soon shoot up in prominent development a gigantic antichristian corporation. To say that the sentence of a bishop, or the decision of a presbytery, is actually the mind of Christ, and that to deny it is to cast off Christ's headship, is one of those germinating principles of Romanism, which are perilous in proportion to their plausibility and the piety of those men who espouse them. There are

We are one or the other-wheat or tares. many distinctions in the world, there are many sects and parties; but, disguise it as we may, there are only two real and lasting classes of mankind, beyond whom all other distinctions are extrinsic, outward, perishing. Either among the tares or wheat we are. Sheep or goats, wise or foolish virgins, with or without a wedding garment, each one of us stands before God this day.

In the next place, there shall be here, we learn, everlasting separation. Children shall be severed from their parents, wives from their husbands; and that separation shall last for ever and ever. The tares shall be bound in bundles; the lost shall be united into one, and their union shall only aggravate their curse. The wheat shall also be collected together. All from Adam to Abraham, and from Abraham to the end of the world, who belong to the church of Christ, will stand together, and constitute one holy, and happy, and blessed household.

The whole parable is suggestive of duties in the day that now is, and vividly prefigurative of that solemn day that is soon to be. It is a foreshadow of it. We may form an anticipation of it, by studying the outlines of the parable of the tares and wheat. At that day, when so severe a separation shall occur, O Christ, number us with thy saints in glory everlasting!

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LECTURE X.

THE RICH FOOL.

And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.-LUKE xii. 16–21.

It appears from the previous portion of the chapter from which these words are taken, that our Lord had been inculcating upon his followers the duty and the privilege of perfect confidence in the love, the wisdom, the providential arrangements of their Father in heaven. It appears, however, that in the midst of this discourse, so beautiful and so instructive-a discourse which he resumes almost immediately after uttering the parable-some one approached him with this requirement, "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." Our Lord refused to be a divider, called upon him, and all who sympathized with him, to beware of covetousness, and then he related the important and instructive parable which we have just read. Now the sin of this man, who approached our Lord with this request, is not stated to have been his asking him to divide the inheritance. There was no sin in desiring, as far as circumstances permitted it, his right. And if half the inheritance belonged to him, or was be

queathed to him by a legal and proper will, it was his duty, as it was his right, to require that half. His sin, therefore, lay not in asking for his rights, but in interrupting a discourse so precious, so beautiful, so instructive to the multitude, with a petition, purely, intensely, and exclusively selfish. It was, in other words, saying practically to our Lord, “I have no time to think about my soul. I have no confidence in these the providential arrangements of heaven. I have a matter of my own-a load that lies heavy on my heart, and it is the only subject that I feel to be mighty and important. And if all the world should want light, what do I care? if all the souls of all the multitude around thee should die without a Saviour, what is that to me? my great object is to get half of the inheritance. Do stop from teaching them the way to heaven, and act as a divider of the inheritance between me and my brother." One can see that such conduct indicated the intensest selfishness; a care for his own little want so great as to show that his heart was in the world, and an insensibility to the wants of others, that proved he cared nothing for the kingdom and the things of God. When he made this request, we read that our Lord refused to be a divider. In other words, he acted upon this occasion as he had acted throughout his glorious biography, as a reformer of principles, a purifier of hearts, not a distributer anew of the mechanical and civil arrangements of society. Our Lord came to change men's hearts, not their circumstances, or to change their circumstances by first changing and ameliorating their hearts. He came not to interfere with the laws, or the arrangements, or the polity, or the supremacy of Cæsar; but to implant in men's souls living truths, living principles, which should germinate and grow until the whole world should be overspread with that kingdom whose great elements are righteousness, peace, and

joy; and the kingdoms of this world should become the kingdoms of our Lord, not by force, nor by fraud, but by the living influence of righteousness, and purity, and holiness, and truth. So in this our Lord exhibited himself as a very different reformer from those that assume the name in the various countries of the world. They begin at circumstances, they have forgotten the heart. They say, except your condition be changed, you never can be happy. Our Lord says, except a man's heart be changed, and he be born again, he never can see or enter the kingdom of God. They, like empirics, would change the bed; he, like the great Physician, would heal the patient. Our Lord, after he had made this refusal to be a divider between men, gives a warning, and a very solemn one, against covetousness. Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he hath." What is covetousness? Everybody thinks everybody covetous but himself. It is the last imputation that a man will admit. Covetousness is not the desire of money. I cannot see any thing sinful in desiring an addition to one's income, or an improvement in one's property, in dutiful and Christian submission to the will, the sovereignty, and the good pleasure of God. Money is a power that represents a thousand things. A sovereign is shoes for a missionary, a staff for an invalid, a passage for a Bible, compressed into a little circle of less than an inch diameter, portable, and easily bestowed or exchanged.

Money therefore is in itself a good thing, and there is nothing said in the Bible against having money; nay, it is not unchristian to be rich: Cornelius was a rich man; he was not sinful because he was so. We read of Gaius, who exercised hospitality to the saints. Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man, and yet he was a good man. fectly possible to be poor as Lazarus, and to be the most

It is per