it was not "safely, in their own land,” and you were led, therefore, to look onward to a day when "Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely;" and when they shall no more say, "The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, but, The Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them." At this period shall the new covenant of which you next heard, be fulfilled to the letter, when they shall all know the Lord, from the least to the greatest of them; for he will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. But did you perceive this event to be at hand? No, you saw that another chasm must intervene.

The bitter remembrance of former captivities must be superseded by the endurance of a heavier bondage and intenser suffering. Accumulated sins, brought to a climax in the rejection of their Messiah, must call down the vengeance of a longsuffering God; and, accordingly, the curse which the nation as with one voice invoked in those suicidal words, "His blood be upon us, and upon our children," has now pressed heavy upon them for nearly eighteen hundred years. Surely, then, Judah's Church and nation, in its present condition, stands as a moral warning to all other Churches

and nations, as a monument upon which is written, "Be not high-minded, but fear."

It has not been my privilege to hear this course of lectures, and therefore I may be in danger of trenching upon the subject-matter of the preceding sermons, and of re-stating what has been more effectively stated, but it would not be fitting to pass by the subject of moral warning to the Gentiles, without drawing from it some practical improvement. The question naturally suggests itself, In what state is the Gentile Church at the present day? For eighteen hundred years she has been grafted upon the stock of God's Church, and rich has been the supply of nutriment afforded. The Holy Spirit has been promised without measure; great exemptions as well as vast privileges have been granted. She has been delivered "from that fear of death" which held the ancients “all their lifetime subject to bondage.” She has been freed from a burdensome ceremonial; she may worship her God when and where she will. The whole earth is now an altar consecrated by the sacrifice thereupon of the Lamb of God.

What use has she made of these advantages? Ecclesiastical history tells a mournful tale of truth corrupted and truth neglected; and what says the testimony of our own day? The once famous Churches of the East, the glory has departed from

them; the Churches of Africa are well-nigh extinct; the lamp burns dim upon the altars of the Greek; the Latin is defiled with superstition and with blood; the Lutheran Church sleeps the dull cold sleep of Neology; the last of the orthodox Helvetic Churches has fallen. And in what condition is England's Church? Roused, indeed, from her long slumbers, but still oppressed with the lethargy which so long deadened her faculties, and prostrated her strength. If the cry were now to go forth, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh! go ye out to meet him," which one of the virgin Churches of Christendom could summon her members together, and obey the call? Surely the fate of Judah's Church is a warning voice that speaks to us as if from the tomb, and saith, "If he that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses, of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing?”

But the penalty inflicted in the entombment of Judah and Israel is an evidence that these Churches shall rise again. As was proved to you, the literal fulfilment of the threatening implies the literal fulfilment of the promise. And the promise is, "I will open your graves, O my

people, and cause you to come out of your graves." Here is the ceasing of the penalty upon which immediately the restoration follows, "And bring you into the land of Israel." And the conversion succeeds to the restoration according to this prophecy of Ezekiel, "And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my Spirit within you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it and performed it, saith the Lord." In her return Israel shall discover the unchangeableness of God's purpose towards her, and shall acknowledge, in the changing circumstances of her history, in her wanderings and in her settlings from the coming up out of Egypt until the restoration from all the lands, "that the Lord alone did lead her, and there was no strange god with her."

Is there not something in the thought of a longexiled and deeply-injured people regaining their lost independence and ceasing from their sorrows, which must interest every philanthropic heartsomething in the thought of a people long alienated from their God, almost without a hope for eternity, returning to the fold of safety, and whilst weeping prostrate before the cross of him whom they have rejected and crucified, being

received again into his love, which must give joy to every Christian heart? Surely if our pity has been called forth in thinking upon the past woes of Israel, our sympathies should all be drawn out in the expectation of her future joy, and especially as in that joy the Christian Church shall participate. "If the casting away of them have been the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?" If one dearly beloved, whose remains had long mouldered into dust, should suddenly rise and enter the circle of mourners whom he had left behind, would he not be greeted? And when the spiritual grave of Ezekiel's vision shall give up her dead, shall not her sister Church rejoice that Israel is restored to her? "The Gentiles shall come to her light, and kings to the brightness of her rising." But there is another sense in which these words shall be fulfilled, and this is their primary meaning.

Missionary labour, what has it yet effected? much in proportion to the effort made, but nothing in comparison of the extent of its field of labour. It is the duty of the Christian Church, in obedience to her Lord's commands, to preach the Gospel to every creature. But she must wait for full success till her Lord return and build up Zion. Then when shall Jerusalem once more become the