Greater love can no man have for another than he had,

for men, when he laid down his life for them; and they may therefore rest assured, that in so far as his duty to God and his regard for God's law can permit him, he will not be against men, but on their side. To the humble believer who trusts in nothing but the perfect righteousness of the Saviour-Judge, the thought of standing before him ought not to be appalling. Abiding in him now by faith, when He shall appear, he will have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. He will recognise in his countenance the features of a well-known and long-tried friend; and were it possible for an accusation to arise from any quarter, he will say with humble boldness, "Who is he that condemneth me?-not the judge, for he is Christ, who died for my offences and rose again for my justification, and hath ever been making intercession for me; and now, according to his promise, he is come again to receive me unto himself, that where he is there I may be also." For the Lord Jesus, when sitting as judge of all, and dispensing rewards and punishments at the grand assize of his kingdom, will only be completing his great mediatorial work. And surely it is fitting that such an end should crown such a work, and that he who is the Author of salvation, should likewise be its Finisher.

But while all this is calculated to impart good hope through grace to every humble believer, who is looking and longing for his glorious appearing, what dismay and despair will it not throw into the hearts of the finally impenitent! The sentence upon them will be

pronounced by a man like themselves-able to appreciate all the circumstances under which their guilt was contracted, and both able and willing to take into favourable consideration every thing that can legitimately be urged in arrest of judgment. Hence they will have no room even to pretend, that there can be the least partiality on the side of the judge; nay, it will strike the acutest pang through their trembling spirits, as they stand before the tribunal, to think that he who now addresses them as their judge might have been their Redeemer-that he who must execute upon them "his work, his strange work, judgment," is the very Son of Man who died to save the guilty, and that had they but listened in time to the accents of his grace they would not now have had to hear the thunders of his vengeance-that had they but earnestly sought his face and favour, they would not now have had to encounter the lightning of his eye or the terror of his frown. They would have passed to his right hand instead of his left-they would have been now rising with him to his high glory, instead of being banished with everlasting destruction from his presence. Oh! how they will curse in that day their folly and stupidity in having bartered for the pleasures of a day the joys of a whole eternity. Just say, in what state that man's mind must be, who can seek relief from overwhelming misery and despair, only by averting his countenance from Him who is the light and life of men, crying-" Mountains! fall on us; Rocks! cover us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb," -even that Lamb of God who was once given to take

away sin, and whose blood would have cleansed from all sin, but which now rests, not as atoning, but avenging blood upon their guilty heads. "Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things, and to stand before the Son of Man." Amen.

SERMON X.

THE CONVERSION OF LYDIA.

BY

A. MACNAUGHTON, D.D.,

SENIOR MINISTER OF LESMAHAGOW.

ACTS xvi. 14, 15.

"And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, if ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us."

St. Paul was, in many respects, an extraordinary man. In studying those peculiarites of character which fitted him for his apostolic mission, it is impossible to overlook the happy versatility of his heaven-directed genius; the holy tact with which he adapted himself to the various classes of character whom he had occasion to address, becoming "all things to all men, that he

might gain some." A man of learning—while, on the one hand, he could meet on their own ground the most eminent doctors of his own nation, he could, on the other, give point to his appeals to the sages of the heathen, by quotations from their own favourite poets. An orator of the first class-he knew how to make Felix tremble, and to constrain Agrippa to confess that he "almost persuaded" him "to be a Christian." At the same time, he could so vary his tone and style of address, as to minister to the edification and comfort of the humble seller of purple at Philippi.

It is to this lowly, but interesting individual, that our attention is called by this portion of the evangelic narrative. The narrative, though simple and brief, is full of meaning. It waits not to tell us what may have been the effect of the apostle's preaching on Lydia's fellow-worshippers;—but we learn from it that to her it was "the savour of life,' '—" the power of God unto salvation." She, in fact, became on this occasion the subject of a great spiritual change-of that change which, in forms so various, and under images so deeply impressive, is ever kept prominently before us in the Word of God; and which demands such prominence, because forming, as regards character and personal experience, the turning point of salvation the commencement of that life of grace upon earth, which issues in a life of glory in heaven. There are several important points of instruction in connexion with this change suggested by the narrative under our consideration. It suggests to us, I. its seat; II. its author; III. its instrument; IV. its antecedents; and V.. its effects. To these several