struggles of the wilderness are drawing to an end, and you are about to dwell in a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Think of the wonderful change! To pass in a moment from this world of trial to yonder glorious skies! To go from obscurity to honour, from weariness to rest, from sorrow to joy, from a dungeon to a throne!

Does this change, brethren, really await us? Dare we look to it for support and comfort in the hour of death? To answer this question, we must ask another, How are we living now? If we would die the death of the righteous, we must first learn to live the life of the righteous. If we would die like Moses on Pisgah, in sight of the promised land, we must first, like Moses, turn our backs on a tempting and ensnaring world, and live a life of faith on the Son of God. It is an easy thing for the most irreligious and ungodly to flatter themselves that they shall die in peace and be safe in eternity; but shall God descend from Heaven to fill with joy and to inspire with triumphant hope the heart which has always been shut against His faith and fear? Shall the angels of light be commissioned to convey to their unsullied abode the soul which delights only in sin and uncleanness? Never! "The righteous hath hope in his death, but the wicked is driven away in his wickedness."

Lay these things to heart, brethren. You must soon die; and if you continue to live as the greater part of mankind around you are living, death will be to you an hour of misery and the beginning of an eternity of anguish. Living so, expect not to die as Moses died, but as thousands are daily dying-stupid and unconcerned, or groaning with terror and remorse.

P

The pangs of sickness and disease may be ended, but the pains of eternal death will never know an end.

Make, then, your choice. Determine either to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season and the anguish of destruction throughout eternity; or choose rather to suffer affliction for a season with the people of God, and receive with them the recompense of an everlasting reward. God has joined these things together, and we cannot separate them; indeed, if we are really Christians, we shall not wish to separate them. We shall esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than all worldly treasures and enjoyments; we shall feel that we have here no continuing city, and we shall seek one to come. We shall desire a better country, that is a heavenly, and we shall live as strangers and pilgrims on the earth. We shall pray and strive for that dying to the world, and longing after Heaven, which are inseparably connected with a peaceful death and a happy eternity. If the grace of God has implanted these things in our hearts, we shall die the death of the righteous, and our last end will be like his. We may not indeed see so much of Canaan on this side the river of death as Moses saw of it; but we shall see as much of it on the other side. We shall enter the goodly land, and have our inheritance in it with the Israel of God for ever and ever.

XXII.

The Barren Fig-Tree.

"Then said He unto the dresser of His vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none; cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also."-LUKE xiii. 7, 8.

OUR liveliest feelings, perhaps, on entering a new year, are those of thankfulness for the goodness and mercy, the abounding goodness and never-failing mercy, which have brought us hitherto. But there are other feelings which ought to have a place in our minds at this time. We have blessings to be answerable for, as well as thankful for personal blessings, family blessings, national blessings, and above all, spiritual privileges and blessings. It is of these last that the parable in the text speaks, and our Church also is now speaking to us of them. By calling on us to commemorate the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles at this Epiphany season, it reminds us of the privileges which we enjoy above our heathen fathers in consequence of that manifestation. "A certain man," says our Lord, "had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard." This certain man represents God; this fig-tree a nominal Christian.

1. Notice the situation of the tree-the place where it stands. It is in God's vineyard; and our Lord tells us how it came there. The vineyard was not its natural situation. It did not spring up there, nor was it brought there by accident; God himself had planted it there. An emblem, brethren, of our situation at this hour, and of the way in which we came into it. You and I are in God's vineyard. We are standing in the midst of God's Church, and it is God Himself who has placed us in it. Our spiritual privileges are not common blessings; they are not, like the air and the light, our natural inheritance, the common bounties of God's providence. Look through the world: how many of our fellow-creatures can we find who are blessed as we are? The heart aches as we attempt to answer the question. It is no vineyard; it is a wilderness, in which the great mass of our fellow-sinners are standing, a desolate wilderness; whereas we, in Christian England, and in this Christian parish, are in a cultivated and fertile field, or rather in a garden, which the Lord has recovered out of that wilderness, and set apart for Himself.

2. See next what is expected from this tree. Is it that it shall take root and grow where it is planted, and receive the showers of heaven as they fall on it? We may say Yes; but God would say, "No; this will not satisfy Me: what I require of it is fruit, not only widespreading branches and luxuriant foliage; the wild fig-tree of the desert will give me these. I must have of that tree something answering to the situation in which I have placed it, and to the care and pains I have bestowed on it: I come to it seeking fruit." And what is this fruit?

It is not those things which some of us, perhaps, have now in our minds, the social and moral virtues-charity, honesty, and such like. These are all good in their way, but these are fruits of Nature's growth-the wild figtree's produce. The heathen and idolater will bring them forth. The tree our Lord speaks of is a tree in a vineyard, a planted and cultivated tree, and something more than fruit of this common kind is expected from it.

Twice over He says, forth grapes, and it

Turn to the fifth chapter of Isaiah. God is described there as enclosing and planting a vineyard for Himself. He goes to it for fruit, and He finds fruit, but of what sort? Of just the same sort as these vines would have produced if He had left them alone-if He had suffered them to grow wild in the desert. "I looked that it should bring brought forth wild grapes," and for this He lays that vineyard waste. So with us. Social and heathen virtues in us will not satisfy God. He wants fruit from us, corresponding to the privileges He has bestowed upon us; not only more fruit than the heathen could render Him, but fruit of another kind-Christian fruit: such fruit as nothing but the gospel of Christ can produce, and which none but men planted in his Church, and brought under the influence of that gospel, ever yielded Him.

He addresses us, in His gospel, as sinners. He makes Himself known to us as the sinner's Saviour and God.

He tells us that He is full of pity and love for sinners, and has done more for them than for any other creatures in His universe; and what He demands from us is, that we should feel towards Him and act