earthly-minded. Like Lot, they lifted up their eyes, and saw the plain "fruitful and well watered;" and first pitched their tent, and then built them an abode.

Such is now the every-day Christianity which we have inherited, and such our inconsistent state. Though we are ever saying, "He shall come again in glory to judge both the quick and the dead;" though we shew forth the Lord's death in the consecrated bread and wine; yet men are swallowed up in this mortal life. Fathers are mere fathers; husbands mere husbands; mourners are overwhelmed with grief; they that rejoice are excessive in their gladness. The man of science has few thoughts for a world unseen; the man of business no leisure; the calculator lives in his reckonings, the buyer in his bargain; the seller has no care beyond his price; the statesman is centred in his schemes, and his whole being terminates in his line of policy. Most men are just what they are in this life; and never rise above it, or look out beyond it. No purpose of their heart is controlled and checked by the thought of the day of Christ. They know that it must come; and deceive themselves into thinking that they are swayed by the expectation; but they neither do nor leave undone any thing that they would not do or leave undone, though He should never come again.

And even more thoughtful men silently prescribe a course for the providence of God; for where is there one who so feels himself uncertain of what shall be, as to say with St. Paul, "we shall not all sleep?" Men speak as if the apostle were mistaken, and themselves better taught. We all expect to live, and then in due time to die; and that Israel must be first grafted into Christ, and His kingdom be first universal, that there is much to be done before He can come again; and that whosoever shall be quick on earth at His appearing, yet surely we shall not. Both they that slight the prophecies of Christ, and they that over-wisely expound them, alike fall into the same snare; they would make some reckoning about that day and hour, of which no man knoweth-not even God's angels,-but the Father only. Surely it is as much a fault to say, It cannot be yet, as to say, It shall be at such time. Who can say when it shall be? Who dares to tell us when it shall not be? Uncertainty is the very condition of waiting, and the spur of expectation. All we know is, that Christ has not told us when He will come; but He has said, “Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh." Let us, then, draw some rules from what has been said, by which to bring this truth to bear on our own conduct.

1. First, let us learn not to go out of our lot and character in life, but to live above it. What and where we are, is God's appointment. It is He who makes us to joy or weep, to have or to lose. We' have a work to do for Him; and it is just that work which lies before us in our daily life. It is only the restless impatience of self-will that drives a man to throw himself into new and strange positions, other than God has ordered. There is no state or office (not being in itself sinful) in all the complex bearings of a Christian commonwealth, which may not, by the spirit of obedience, be sanctified to God; and every state has a becoming character, which we are bidden to realise in ourselves. But this character must begin and end in God; must take its rise in His will, and terminate in His glory. It is not simply by weeping or rejoicing, buying or selling, abounding or suffering want, that we are what we are; but by doing and suffering all things as He would have us to do and suffer them. To affect contempt for all these natural states and actions of life, with the plea that we live for God, is mere affectation and contempt of God's own ordinance: to live without habitual thought of God, and of the day of Christ's appearing, with the plea that we are controlled by the outward accidents of life, is mere self-deceit, and abandonment of God Himself. And yet to these two

extreme faults almost all minds are continually tending: either to what is singular and ostentatious in religion, so ending in excitement, and often in declension; or to what is worldly and sullen, and, from a neglect of religion, ending in slighting and despising it.

2. To check these two extremes, then, let us strive to live as we would desire to be found by Him at His coming.

Who can bear the thought of being taken unawares in the madness of a sinful life, in secret vice, or in undisguised folly; or with a temper unrestrained, or puffed up with self-esteem, or wavering at every gust of fashion, or fettered by false customs, or over-careful about money, or fretful in a low estate, or murmuring in affliction, or dreaming away this short life in the unrealities ^ of empty self-indulgence, or forgetful of God amidst the abundance of His chiefest blessings? Let us strive, then, to put off these things with a steady boldness, and, if need be, with a severe self-restraint. The trader, or the man of letters, or of a learned profession, or of a full and easy habit of life,—each must look into his own state. There is a characteristic temptation which besets every state-so subtle and insensible, that it is like the ill habits of gait and manner, which, being formed unconsciously, become hardly dis

tinguishable from natural action, and yet produce some ill effects at last. Who is there that would not dread to be found at that day with a buried talent and an untrimmed lamp; with a sleepy conscience and a double mind; with a shallow repentance or a half-converted heart? Alas for the halfpenitent, half-changed man, almost a Christian, and almost saved! It must not be so with us. At any cost, we must win eternal life. It is by living in our plain path of duty, but with an habitual remembrance of His coming; by using the world as we use our daily food, not so much from choice as from necessity, and yet with no unthankful sullenness, but with gladness and singleness of heart; by being ever ready, both for the duties of the day, and for the coming hour of judgment,—by this twofold discipline of self is the Christian man so prepared, that the day of Christ can neither come too late nor too soon for him.

3. Surely, then, we have need to lose no time; for "the time is short." If we dare not say, the time is not yet, how dare we live as if that were true which we dare not say? We shall lose nothing by being ever ready, and by living—if I may so speak, as men say of things they cannot calculate or control-on the chance. In the concerns of this life, the lightest overpoise of probability determines our strongest resolutions.

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