ance of eternal fire (Jude 7). The overthrow of ancient Babylon is foretold in Isaiah xiii. as the coming of the day of the Lord, in which the sun and stars and all the constellations shall cease to give their light upon it, and destruction from the Lord of hosts shall overwhelm it. In the same way Jerusalem, ancient Rome, and other nations and proud cities have had their day of judgment. And individuals, too, like Nadab and Abihu and Korah, and Ananias and Sapphira-like Herod and Julius Cæsar and Nero and Alexander and Napoleon have met their day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. And men and communities all around us, who are no greater sinners perhaps than the eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, whom Jesus pronounced no worse than their Jerusalem neighbours, are being brought to their day of judgment. The villagers in Hungary were doubtless right. To them a day of judgment did come. And just here we call attention to the fact that in the Greek Testament the article "the" is always omitted (with one exception) from this phrase "day of judgment." In the Bible view, nations, men, come to their day of judgment long before the remote assize to which we have been accustomed to postpone it. And hence, in Scripture, this day has a much closer relation to individuals and special communities than we have been led to think in our traditional conceptions which mass all mankind for judgment at one great day in the far-distant future. Even our recent Revisers show their bondage to this idea by always adhering to the phrase "the day of judgment" where the absence of the article leaves us free to say "a day," or

"their day of judgment." We believe it would be a great gain for the cause of both Christian truth and pub. lic virtue if, instead of the expectation that the results of human conduct are to be met in the remote future, to which the fruitage of our doing is postponed, we could see that "the eyes of the Lord are now open upon all the ways of the sons of men to give unto every one according to his way, and according to the fruit of his doings." We need to have our eyes opened, as were those of Elisha's servant, to see all Nature alive with God's ministries of mercy and of wrath. We need to view our Lord as now enthroned above all the powers of the universe, the forces of nature, which are angels of His might, His ministers, which do His pleasure. We shall then cease to see in the plagues and famines and earthquakes, the battles and conflagrations of which the newspapers make almost daily record, the mere results of natural laws, or of human passions and follies. We shall see the hand of the Son of Man, the world's King and Judge, in them all. We shall see that "the history of the world is the judgment of the world." And we shall learn that His "coming to judgment" is but the open and signal manifestation of an administration which began with His ascension, and which, now carried on behind the clouds, is soon to be so unveiled that before Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

"MANY people seem to think that, while theology must go on improving from age to age, it must also remain exactly what it was a hundred years ago."

THE PLAGUE OF HEAT.

And the fourth poured out his bowl upon the sun; and it was given unto it to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat and they blasphemed the name of the God which hath the power over these plagues; and they repented not to give Him glory. Rev. xvi., 8, 9.

The intense heat which has prevailed over the whole country for the past month has doubtless brought these words from the Apocalypse to many minds. The prostration and suffering produced by the unwonted energy of the sun's rays, with the consequent mortality, have made the heat to rise almost to the proportion of a plague. A few words, therefore, concerning the meaning of the above-quoted Scripture will be in place,

A fundamental question in the interpretation of this Book is that of its date. If the modern school of interpreters can make out their case, when they insist that it was written about A. D. 68, before the destruction of Jerusalem, and during the persecution under Nero, they establish a strong presumption that the calamities and woes it foretells relate to the judgments by which, first, the Jewish State, and afterwards the pagan, persecuting empire of Rome was overthrown. We are not yet convinced, however, that they have made out their case. But into this question we cannot now enter. It may be admitted that these plagues have primary reference to these swiftly-approaching disasters, by which the chiefworldly enemies of the Church were brought down to the dust. And yet they equally apply to the desolation that must overtake the enemies of God in every age, and especially the Christ-rejecting worshippers of Mammon

and of Nature, who in the last day's of this age refuse to acknowledge Him as the world's lawful King and Saviour.

Still another question concerning these predicted plagues. Are we to look for their verification in the sphere of physical calamities, according to the letter, or in that of spiritual verities? Have we here predicted a veritable plague of fiery heat from the sun, such as our late experience may be an earnest of, and, as we know, is physically possible? Or, is the reference to some wilting blast of a despotic worldly power, of whose rule the sun is a proper symbol? Or, if not this, is some scorching up of the streams of spiritual life and joy inthe soul of man the thing intended?

To this we reply by appealing first to the uniform scriptural fact, apparent in all the records of God's dealing with man, that the forces of nature are the common executioners of His judgments. It was so at the flood, at the judgments upon Egypt, which, indeed, are the prototype of the plagues threatened in the Revelation. All through human history, sacred and profane, earthquakes and famine, pestilences, hail-storms, locusts, as in the days of Joel; drought, as in the days of Elijah, have been the recognized instruments of the Divine vengeance, and the signs that a day of the Lord was at hand. Our Lord, in predicting the advent of His kingdom, warns His disciples to expect this same kind of calamities. "There shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places." No good reason can be given why these words should be taken out of the sphere of physical events to which they belong, and to which Old Testa

ment usage assigns them. Nor is there any reason why we should refuse to believe, when the Revelator predicts that men shall be scorched under the blasting rays of the sun, that just this plague of solar heat shall be one of the forms in which the God above Nature shall punish those who worship and serve the creature above the Creator. Indeed, with the view taken in the article preceding this of all the energies of nature as angels of His might, we see that such judgments are a part of His constant and universal administration. It has been true ever since these words were written that large portions of the earth's surface and multitudes of its inhabitants have been smitten under the javelin beams of the sun. Our experience the last few weeks may suggest to us what must be the greater sufferings and the greater peril from this source of the crowded populations of India and parts of Arabia and Africa, where such torrid heat is not occasional, but uniform throughout the summer, and where human life is burdened and enfeebled by it to an extent unknown to us. And it cannot be difficult for any of us to conceive how a few added degrees of heat to that recently experienced would bring upon us a misery such as is here sketched by the inspired seer. The point we would make from his words is that Nature is ever to be viewed as a great armory from which its Author is ever drawing weapons for the punishment of those who despise His name, and out of which He shall yet bring those judgments upon the earth by means of which its inhabitants shall be humbled under His mighty hand.

While insisting, however, from all the past analogies of God's judicial dealings, that these woes are literal