is our interest, gratefully to receive his lessons. Though we have not the advantage of hearing him personally, his gospel, nevertheless, remains to us. He has left his mantle behind him, beneath which, all who seek it may find shelter, and security. Seated upon that celestial throne where he shall preside at the great and terrible day of account, he still retains that authority which attended him upon earth. He watches over our practices, He observes our submission or defection, He is witness of our disobedience; of all which He will finally become the judge "when He shall be revealed from Heaven, with his mighty Angels, taking vengence on them that know not God, and that obey no his gospel.' Upon that awful consummation of time, when "the earth and the works also that are therein shall be burnt up ;"-when the Son of Man, in the incommunicable effulgence of his glory, shall preside at that tremendous tribunal, before which the innumerable hosts of quick and dead shall be arraigned; to such as have "despised his counsels," he will pronounce the irreversible decision, "these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."

Let us consider, then, what will be the end of slighting those instructions which he has left for the benefit of mankind; and, as a just incitement to read and profit by them, let us also consider, what advantages we have over those early disciples

who voluntarily submitted to tortures and to death for the love of Christ. The Saviour's authority is better proved and more widely exhibited to us than it was to them. They beheld him in his humility; we contemplate him in his glory. They viewed him in his degradation; we consider him in the fulness of his godhead. They heard his predictions; but it was left for us to witness their accomplishment. They were not in a position to form a just estimate of the salutary effects of his doctrines; but to us, the experience of eighteen hundred years has furnished to them a plenary confirmation. They could not certainly know, whether the religion which he founded would gain sufficient accessions of strength to become widely established; but we are alive to see it extending its influence from one end of the world to the other. The Almighty himself has commanded us to hear his Son: "And, whosoever," saith the Lord, "will not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." If we set at nought this warning by our disobedience—we, as it were, declare war against "the High and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity;" we, in fact, withdraw our allegiance from Him, and renounce his authority over us. We are to remember, that the conditions upon which we shall be with him in Paradise, are, faith in the efficacy of that atonement, which he made for the sins of men, at the price of sufferings such as had never

been endured, until he glorified the cross by expiring upon it.

I shall, in conclusion, call your attention to one lamentable, but memorable, instance of the danger of rejecting his instructions, "whose word was with power." Moses, having established the civil and religious government of the Israelites, for which he was especially chosen by Divine Providence, in the effulgent spirit of inspiration, saw through the darkness of the coming time, a more eminent period, when a dignity more ennobled, a religion more sublime, should supersede that complicated structure which the divine will had raised up through him. The weak star glimmered in the distant future, but only distinguishable by the prophetic eye, whose beams were to shed such diffusive lustre over a benighted world. The man, who amidst the thunders of Sinai, received the tables of the law from the hand of God, saw in prophetic vision this resplendent luminary march up the horizon in glory to its meridian, dispel, by "the brightness of its rising," those pestilent vapours of error which had so long corrupted the whole civilized earth, and fix at length, like an everlasting sun, in the firmament of heaven, within whose eternal light "there is joy among the Angels of God." "The Lord thy God," said Moses, "will raise up unto thee a prophet, from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him shall ye hearken." The words of the Hebrew lawgiver have had their

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accomplishment. Jesus of Nazareth arose and fulfilled the prophecy. The expected Messiah was proclaimed. A forerunner heralded his advent; but the rebellious Jews rejected him. phemed his doctrines; they stigmatized his person; they proceeded to the most malignant outrages against him, and, finally, stretched him upon the cross, exclaiming, amid the transports of their ferocious vengeance, "his blood be upon us, and upon our children." Scarcely had this horrible anathema escaped their lips, than war, with all its accompanying horrors, advanced upon them. What consternation, what afflictions, what sufferings ensued! The sword of slaughter reeked with the blood of thousands, and the shrieks of hardened impiety went up for a memorial of condemnation to Heaven.

Let us, a moment, mark the misery of the holy city. Depopulated by the enemy, split into factions, which, like the serpent's offspring, preyed upon the vitals of their common parent, weakened by plague, devastated by pestilence, and consumed by famine, Judea became the theatre of desolation, and Jerusalem a pile of ruins. "The Lord of Hosts mustered the hosts of the battle. 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." How literally was our blessed Lord's prediction fulfilled! "For the days shall come upon thee that thine

enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down."

Thus was annihilated the empire of the Jews, who rejected and crucified the Lord of Glory. Still a remnant of their wretched successors remains, a sad example of divine vengeance, scattered over the face of the earth, the scorn of almost every country whither they have flown for refuge. They are, like the unburied ashes of a corpse, which time has consumed, lifted up and scattered by the storm. Such have been the deplorable consequences of rejecting the doctrines of him whose "word was with power;" "who taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes ;" whom the Almighty recognized as his Son, and commanded us to hear. We need no loftier argument to induce us to comply, than that it is the will of God. His authority alone ought to be sufficient for us all.

Let us then respect that authority, which is only exercised to make us happy; nor, like the ancient Jews, despise the blessed Jesus, because his dispensations consist not in temporalities. As he has died for us, according to the spirit of our faith, his death will prove to us either a stumbling-block or a means of salvation. Let us set our best affec