to bestow. We have but to desire what we need, and he is willing to supply it. Let us pray always that we may be accounted worthy to escape those things which shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.

We need a more trustful spirit. Hope in Christ's advent must be accompanied by present trust in him while yet unseen. We must not only trust him for salvation, but for everything which accompanies salvation; not only for salvation from sin's guilt, but for salvation also from sin's power. An unbelieving spirit does not become those who have already believed to life everlasting. I think that some distrust Jesus in the daily details of their Christian life, who do not doubt that its existence altogether is owing to him. This is a great mistake. We must trust him for everything. And when we think of him as about to come again in glory, brightly, quickly, suddenly, then we must also trust him. Never must we allow our hearts to feel afraid of his not taking care of us then. We must just

commit it all to him, assured of this, that he is able and willing to keep us, and to "present us faultless before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy.

But, lastly, how deep should be the impression on the mind of each unconverted one, resulting from this truth-Christ is coming like the lightning, you know not how soon, or how suddenly. He is coming to take away from your side that Christian friend who is now beseeching you to come to Jesus. You will find yourself one day alone without any but those, like yourself, strangers to the Saviour. The day of grace will have passed with that lightning-like appearance of the Son of Man. It will have been but a moment, but on that

moment will have hung eternity. Oh! it will be vain, as the saints recede from view, ascending like their Master, with glorified bodies, to attempt to follow them. It cannot be. They go upward, and upward still, till they meet in the air him whom they have loved below, to part from him no more for ever. And then the lightning glory has passed-passed like a vision. And earth is still the same-the same, except that the voice of warning and the voice of invitation will be silent. It is not silent now. Now you are invited to the Saviour. Now you are besought to come to Jesus. Now you may be safe. Then, when the day of the Son of Man arrives, it will be a day of brightness; and Christ, made yours to-day, will call you his for ever.

CHAPTER XIII.

LAST APOSTASY OF THE JEWS.

WE Come back in this chapter from the crown to the cross from Christ coming like the lightning in the clouds of heaven, to Christ coming in great humility to suffer, bleed, and die; and there is no place so dear to the Christian as the foot of the cross. Never can we

do without the sprinkling of the blood.

"Sweet the moments, rich in blessing,

Which before the cross I spend ;

Light and life and peace possessing,

From the sinner's dying Friend."

Where is the believer whose heart does not vibrate in unison with that note? And though it is pleasant to think of the glorious advent, and to anticipate the manifestation of the sons of God, never, never can we rise above the necessity of the sprinkled blood. From first to last that must be our hope, and the Christian life then soars highest when it sinks the lowest in the fountain open for sin and for uncleanness.

Order is characteristic of all God's works, and a large proportion of human mistakes about divine things, arises from not attending to it. It is very common to speak of the mistaken views of the disciples respecting Christ's kingdom. Their chief error was one of order— they looked for the crown before the cross, and lost

sight of what Jesus said of himself: "But first must he suffer many stings." They forgot the word "first." It is so sometimes in our Christian life. Much of error arises from forgetting the word "first." God had foretold much about the coming of Christ by the mouth of his holy prophets. They testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow, and the disciples, and the Jews generally, understood, in a degree, the second, but forgot the first. We cannot be too thankful that God did not forget it. For important and delightful as the second is to the Christian, had it not been for the first, there could have been no Christian to take delight in it. There can be no glory without humiliation. Sin must be atoned for before there can

be any salvation. And while we look forward to a coming day when the Son of Man shall be revealed in his brightness, that hope we could never have had-it would have been delusion to cherish it-had he not suffered first. "First must he suffer many things, and be rejected of his generation."

He

We must not limit the sufferings here spoken of to the sufferings on the cross. These were penal, the punishment of our sins; but there were other sorrows besides. His life was a life of sorrow. From infancy to death he was always more or less suffering. was emphatically a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. This experience of suffering answered a twofold purpose-it fitted him to be a sympathizing Saviour, a tender brother, able to be touched with the feeling of infirmities-and it enabled him to make atonement for our sins; thus in both ways giving meaning to that text, "It became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory,

to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings."

The sufferings of Christ were of various kinds— bodily, mental, and spiritual. He suffered in every part of our nature. Bodily suffering was borne by him at the cross. It is a mistake to think of this as in any way diminished by his possessing a divine nature. The manhood was by that made capable of endurance. Its susceptibilities were increased. He was able to feel even bodily pain with an intensity of which we can have no conception. He bore bodily pain in atoning for sin, because we have sinned in every part of our nature, and therefore atonement must in every part of our nature be made. The twenty-second Psalm, which is prophetic of the sufferings of Christ, very much dwells on these: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones." Such were the words put into Christ's mouth in prophecy so long before, and they bring the bodily sufferings very prominently forward.

Besides the most important purpose fulfilled in this bodily suffering of making atonement, there is great comfort in the thought to the bodily sufferer. There is a hard stoicism which would represent bodily suffering as below the consideration of a man, and pretend to rise altogether above it; but this meets with no countenance from the Man of Sorrows. As of every other grief, so of this, he drank to the very dregs. And hence even in