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injustice to ourselves, and a criminal wrong to our children, when we disregard the solemn obligations that are pressed upon us. I say, a criminal wrong to our children; for we stand as a beacon, or as a pattern to them: our present conduct is not confined to ourselves, it shall reach our posterity. The influence of example is beyond all calculation: like a rill almost imperceptible in its first rise, it swells and swells until it at length becomes a river and a sea. It was the solemn charge of old, as written in the Revelations, the solemn charge against the professing church of God-"I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead." It is incumbent on all present especially to afford a practical illustration in the life to the words of Solomon, "Cease to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge." You must hold fast the words of sound doctrine, because they affect the great and the coming destinies of the imperishable soul. Deceive not yourselves; we hear not for time, but we hear for eternity. Sermons will be witnesses against us at the bar of the Great God at the Last Day. Ministers will be witnesses against you: you hear for eternity. The voice of the preacher discourses upon all things only as they bear upon the awful realities of the world that shall endure for ever. The hands of the preacher spread wide the gate that leads from the vain and unsatisfactory honours of this present scene to the glories that are everlasting; the gates that conduct to undying blessedness. And is there not a stirring amongst you? is there not an eagerness amongst you, as it regards your own admission? Shall the recording angel—for a recording angel is present amongst you-go, as it were, silently back to heaven without seeing one sacrificial offering of a broken and of a contrite spirit; without having heard the utterance of any new and holy desire; without having witnessed one tear of contrition falling down the cheeks of him that hath erred and that hath caused to err? Shall he silently go back, and give in no account but that which will bring shame and indelible disgrace? You must determine for yourselves. Would you prefer the pleasures of sin for a season to an eternal inheritance with the saints in light? It is for me to beseech you to hold fast the truths which you have heard, and to conjure you to repent; to repent of the past, not only with the confession of the lip, but with the serious prayerful movement of the heart; to repent not only in the church in a set form of prayers, but to show the sincerity of the act in the newness of your lives; that men may take knowledge of you, of the mighty change that is wrought in the heart and that purifies the life. Ah, Christian friends, the assigned period of your hearing and my preaching is daily contracting; your opportunities are fast slipping away, like the noiseless atoms of earth that fall from beneath your feet at every lift; and you shall soon sink into darkness and into death. Oh! you shall sink, -whether beneath the agonizing throes of reflected guilt, whether amidst the shuddering scenes of a darker gloom than that in which the spirit retires, or whether it shall be with a peace and a comfort still brightening as the shadows of death spread broader and deeper upon you-it is, I say, for yourselves to determine. It is certain, it is morally certain, that your future destiny shall only be the eternal fixedness of your present habits, in pleasure or in pain.

Be ye, therefore, wise; cultivate the things which be of God. "Remember how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent." Remember this, by the dread solemnities expressed in the concluding words of the verse, than which there is not a more solemn sentence in the whole Word of God: "If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon th." Amen.

THE FINAL ADVENT OF CHRIST.

REV. H. F. BURDER, D. D.

JEWIN STREET CHAPEL, DECEMBER 17, 1833.

"And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them."-REV. xx. 11.

THE volume of unfulfilled prophecy must be almost unintelligible to those who have not studied the bold imagery and peculiar symbols of the ancient prophets; a want of acquaintance with the meaning and use of those striking metaphors, has led some to apply to the literal and final advent of Christ, predictions which were to be understood figuratively, and which refer to signal interpositions of the power of Christ, without his personal advent and without his visible reign. As the shortest and the safest method of proof and illustration, previously to entering immediately on the consideration of the subject appointed, let me read to you a few specimens of prophetical language.

The first to which I will direct your thoughts you will find in Isaiah xiii., and it is entitled (for it is a separate prophecy), "The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see;" and was unquestionably a prediction of the capture and desolation of Babylon by the Medes and Persians. Yet observe in what terms that prophecy is expressed: "They came from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger." Now this is not the only passage in which the heavenly bodies are represented as symbols of the ruling powers. The cutting down of the sun and moon and stars is intended to mean the fall and ruin of those who did bear sway in the political relations of a country.

Again, in Joel ii., we have this phraseology: "It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come." Now, the Apostle Peter himself, on the day of Pentecost, applies the first part of that prophecy to the pouring forth of the Holy Ghost on that very day, and therefore authorises us to refer that day of the Lord, which is so terrible, to that period in which Christ may be said figuratively to have come, to destroy Jerusalem, and lay in ruins the temple, and terminate the civil polity of the Jews, so that they may be dispersed over all countries; which dispersion, you know, continues to the present day.

I will only refer to one other passage, in order to confirm these preliminary remarks, and that is in Daniel vii.: "I beheld till the thrones were cast down; and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool; his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body was destroyed, and given to the burning flame." Now when you examine strictly that prophecy in its connexion, and attend to the chronology of the whole passage, it is plain that it is a description of the destruction of the Papal Antichrist, the beast and the false prophet, previous to the millenial reign of the Son of God; a period, not we presume very far distant, but which is to take place in order to the peaceful, glorious, yet invisible, spiritual reign of our Lord Jesus Christ upon this earth; not that he will then appear and reign in person, (as some suppose, from mistaken views of the figurative language of these and other passages,) but that he will then, by the power of the Word and his Spirit, be the acknowledged Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and also when the whole of this world's population shall be brought to believe on his name, and to subject themselves willingly to his peaceful rule.

Very different however from the passages already adduced, is the meaning of the predictions given in the words that have been read as our text. Of this we may be certain, from the place which it occupies in the scheme of prophecy in this book of the Revelations. It is not only after the prediction of the termination of the great prophetical period of twelve hundred and sixty years, which is to mark the duration of the reign of the Papal Antichrist, a period to which the last passage I quoted distinctly refers; but after the millenial period itself shall have closed, which is introductory to the consummation of all things and to the final state of the children of men. And, brethren, it is impossible to arrive at close, definite, satisfactory, sober-minded views of this, or any other prophecy, without taking the whole system and scheme into view—seeing the place it occupies, what precedes, what follows, what is the general bearing of the whole, and on what scriptural principles it may be justly and correctly interpreted. "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. 80 Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." "Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him." To this the passage I first read refers; because it includes the distinct prediction of the glorious period of the millenial reign: "And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works."

Now a similar phraseology is introduced in that passage in the book of Daniel. As is common in many other parts in the Scriptures, the phraseology is borrowed from the proceedings of the last day, though applied to predictions that are to take place long before: but that other passage refers to judgment

or nat‍ens, and nations can only be judged and punished in the present life: that was the judgment of Antichrist: but the passage before us refers to the judgment of the whole world as made up of individual men. Such is the representation of the passage which is read before us; "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

The spirit-stirring words which have been read set before us three things:The final advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, in order to judge the world: the proceedings of the judgment itself: and the results by which it will be followed.

In the first place, contemplate THE FINAL ADVENT OF CHRIST in order to JUDGE THE world. "Where is the promise of his coming?" the sceptics will be contemptuously asking, after the period of the one thousand years of millenial blessedness shall have closed. And in the midst of all their infidelity

(for infidelity is to assume a power-it is distinctly asserted there will be a conspiracy against the saints of God, even after the millenium shall have closed,) and in the midst of all their infidelity, of all their malignity, and all their conspiracies against the people of God, the day will come upon them as a thief in the night; at a moment when they shall be saying "Peace and safety," sudder. destruction shall arise. At midnight, perhaps, the cry will be heard, “Behold he cometh!" A splendour, such as Saul beheld on his way to Damascus, such as the Apostle John beheld in Patmos-yes, an appearance far more intense, may suddenly beam forth from the face of the approaching Judge, and light up the heavens with a blaze of glory. Now will be the manifestation of the Son of God; he will be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, appearing in all the glory of his Father, when he shall come to be justified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe. How unlike the babe of Bethlehem-how unlike the carpenter of Nazareth-how unlike the wearied traveller at Jacob's well-how unlike the prostrate suppliant at Gethsemane-how unlike the buffetted, scourged, and crucified man of Calvary is He that cometh, with all his holy angels at the last great day! The multitude of angels, with a shout loud as from numbers without number, pause only in their acclamations that the deep silence which succeeds may be broken by the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God. That Archangel, the herald of the highest rank in the creation, shall first proclaim the second advent of Messiah, and then that appalling and unearthly trumpet, once heard on Sinai, shall summon from their dust the sleepers of the grave.

Now mark the language of the thirteenth verse of the passage before us: "The sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell"—or rather Hades, retaining the word in the original-" Death and Hades delivered up the dead which were in them." Death is represented here as having had possession of the bodies of men, both as regards the righteous and the wicked. "Hades," that is, the world unseen, (for so the word signifies) not the place of punishment, for that is not here meant; it is not the same word in the originalHades is represented as having had possession of the souls of men, both as regards the righteous and the wicked. Death, then, is compelled to surrender the bodies, and they rise to die no more. The unseen world surrenders the

souls of men, from its two great divisions-the one the abodes of the righteous, and the other the abodes of the wicked, and these souls now enter their risen bodies, preparatory to the judgment.

With this connect the words of our Lord in John v. where we find him saying "As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." From this passage, compared with that before us, we may suppose, that when the trumpet of the Archangel shall sound, all the dead, both the righteous and the wicked, will come forth; they who have been buried with every honour that could be paid them, and they who have been buried without honour, they who have not been buried at all, and they who had been cast inhabitants-the sea, a It is indeed said, th explained by the Apos then living shall be tr slept in Jesus shall ac the trumpet shall sou vigorous, beauteous, g That resurrection shall without death, of tho "In a moment, in the place. Oh, how impos ecstacy of those who, ness of death, such b to live in blessedness port when conscious o

And now comes do of the Son of God: ar flagration, the burning the night, and the ea and the elements shall are therein shall be b reserved unto fire in Previously to this, bo taken up together to dissolving elements astonished spectators destroyed in that del degradation and suffe of Christ. Oh, my expressly said, "to sh yet seen a human bo summoned before Go sins committed in the the contemplation!

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