the next words will be dearer and brighter to us than they have ever been.

XI. 'He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly; even so, come, Lord Jesus.'

If I have in these sermons succeeded in showing you that the Lord Jesus Christ did, in very deed and truth, manifest Himself in the latter days of the old dispensation-that apostles and saints were not deceived in their expectation that the end of an age was at hand, and that a newer and more glorious age was to succeed it-I trust I shall have given you fresh strength and warrant for believing these warnings, and praying this prayer. Supposing the apostle was disappointed—supposing what he looked for did not come to pass—the like calamity may be reserved for us.

Admit the revelation

of Jesus Christ the Son and Word of God to have been We shall attribute the real for him, then it is real for us. darkness which hides the Friend, the King, the Judge of the world from us to ourselves and not to Him. And then the clouds that gather about our own steps, or about the destinies of the earth, will be reasons for And every asking that He will come and scatter them. mist that has disappeared in past time will be a pledge for the future, because we shall own and accept it as a sign of the Son of Man,—a token that the daylight was breaking through our night.

XII. And the revelation to us will not be a revelation chiefly for us. It will be a revelation of the first begotten of the dead, of the Prince of all the kings of the earth, of the Lamb that was slain, of the brightness and glory of the Father. That brightness and

glory will at last fill all the earth.

Even so every day,

to him who is watching alone in his own sadness and despondency, to God's every church, in the midst of the world's gloom; even so to all human beings. 'Come, Lord Jesus.'

LECTURE XXIII.

PARTING WORDS.

REV. XXII. v. 21.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

THIS is the last verse of the book upon which I have been speaking to you for some months; the last verse of the Bible. If we think of it, we may find that the very message of the Apocalypse, and of the Bible, is gathered up in it.

I. When you hear the word Grace pronounced in a pulpit, you conclude at once that it has a technical signification; you cast aside, or try to cast aside, the associations which you have with it at ordinary times. Do not make this effort, my friends; it is not a wise one; it defeats itself; it robs us of the deep and peculiar virtue which belongs to the expression in the Scriptural use of it. Allow yourselves to think freely of whatever has presented itself to you as most graceful in the intercourse of life, in the study of art. Do not exclude from your reflections that which was most exquisite in the

outward form and its movements; do not forget what you have described as grace in the animals or in any inanimate object. You will feel-you cannot help feeling that whatever you admired without is determined by something within. There may be grace in stone, but only because it testifies of life. You speak of grace lingering on the countenance of a corpse; you mean that it still bears the impress of the living being whom you knew and loved. You are, therefore, always recalled from looks and acts to something which they denote. You are sure that the grace which appears in them is in that which you cannot see; in the person who looks and who acts.

Reflect on these simple observations, and they will help you, better than many accurate definitions, to apprehend how outward visible signs may betoken an inward spiritual grace. And will they not lead you a step further? At first the grace which you delight in strikes you as something inherent in the person to whom you ascribe it. You observe on the contrast between the grace of one fellow-creature and the ungratefulness of another. You are inclined to call the latter common or vulgar, the former peculiar or exceptional. There is great excuse for that judgment; to reverse it seems like the most flagrant paradox. And yet ask yourselves if you are not doing injustice to

those persons whom you most commend when you seek to separate them from their kind. Is it not a human grace which you recognise in them? If you could not give it that name, would it not lose half its charm and sweetness? So far as it is a departure from a human standard-so far as it is merely individual-is it not imperfect? is it not less gracious? When you speak or think of grace as rare or uncommon, do you not intend to say that few are free from those little affectations and wilfulnesses which mar their human symmetry, which create a certain irregularity and disturbance?

There is, indeed, a flat, dreary uniformity, an absence of all distinctive qualities, of everything strong and marked, which most of us think more disagreeable than even excesses and distortions. But you do not call that uniformity grace; it is the opposite of grace, for it is an approach to death. You want the fulness of life; you would like to see every energy in its perfect play; you long for a harmony which results from the co-operation of all energies. Anything short of this you feel is so far a defect. Yet you do not expect ityou do not even wish for it-in any one of your fellowmen. You feel that each one has some qualities which another wants; some powers in predominance which in his neighbours are subordinate, and are meant to be subordinate. The best are not those who try to be