:

we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep"-shall not come before them, as the subjects of the great change from mortality to immortality" for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first then we which are alive and remain"-being "changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye-shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." This is the day to which the fear and hatred, the hope and love, of the holy and the unholy, have been looking forward in all ages: "the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." Then "the chief Shepherd shall appear;" the Pastor of the pastors; from whom those who have been ensamples to the flock shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.

That there are secret reasons, connected with the complicated interests of God's government, for putting down the final judgment to the last day in the calendar of time, is more than probable. Some of the reasons for it, however, are necessarily obvious.

One great reason, involving many others, lies in the scale of that probation from which infinite Wisdom determined that all created intelligences, angels and men at least, should ascend to confirmed purity and bliss, if obedient; or sink, if disobedient, to confirmed impurity and Such a probation, from its very nature, looks toward a future retribution; as retribution necessarily looks back upon the conduct of probation.

Wo.

A holy order of intelligences, of heavenly origin, have had a probationary period; as is evinced by the historic fact, that some of them "kept not their first estate." Whether the conduct of this order of beings was the subject of a public investigation before or after the delinquent were cast down to tartarus, or not, we have no information. If it was; I speak now of the latter class; if it was, and their sentence involved all the penalty to which they were then liable, it follows that they were probationers afterward, or that, after they ceased to be so, they were nevertheless under responsibility for their conduct; for inspiration declares them subject to the coming judgment,

and that they are foreboding the worst of consequences from it; consequences personal to themselves. They "are reserved in chains of darkness to the judgment of the great day." Whether they will be judged and punished on grounds involving no revision of their former sentence, or reference to transactions lying behind that event, or otherwise, it is certain that they have officiously and malignantly intermeddled with human interests; and there ought to be no doubt that this will constitute an important ground, if not the only one, on which they will be amenable to the common judgment; while, at the same time, it enters among the other reasons for the judgment itself, and for the fixing of it at that period when the history of man's responsible conduct, with which they have voluntarily united their own, shall finally close. If the state prisoner, under lighter punishment for his first capital offense, escape from durance, and wrap a loyal province in the flames of a hellish mutiny, reasons of state demand that he be rearrested; that his trial should be as public as his bad example, and that his new punishment should be commensurate with his new crimes.

Our race is upon probation. The original terms of it have been violated; but, as redemption supervenes upon that event, the consequence is, that a new trial is vouchsafed us on terms adapted to all its peculiarities. So much of the original penalty as demands physical dissolution is unabated, for reasons of present restraint and of ultimate advantage. On our part this condition is involuntary. Others are voluntary. These are to be performed; that, suffered. Both must operate till the remedial scheme, to which both are essential, shall have wrought its ultimate purpose, which cannot be till all probation closes.

Man, as man, cannot answer for his conduct till after his physical restoration. Man is an amalgam of matter and spirit. Spirit is not man, any more than matter is man. Both are intimately blended, and the product is man. A being otherwise constituted, could not have been the subject of his original relation to his Maker. Otherwise constituted, he could sustain none of his present relations. The laws of human mind, and all its operations, derive their peculiar characteristics from corporeal connection. Thrown off from that connection, whatever might,

or might not follow, it would not be what it is: it would not be man.

It was man, proper man, whom God created in his own adorable image. It was the compound being that sinned, and let in death. It was man, proper man, that died, and rose, and ascended the throne of Divinity. His soul and body were both offered up for the redemption of our souls and bodies. It is this blended being who sins, repents, believes, is converted, sanctified; who labors, suffers, dies. And, blessed be God! it is the same man, the concrete man, that rises. It is man, every man that shall give account of himself to God; and, by consequence, must undergo the restoring process provided for in the promised resurrection. His relations indicate this; we might almost say, prove it.

The close of time, co-terminal as it will be, as well with the period of human probation, as with that of the mediatorial government of his Son, cannot but constitute such an epoch in the annals of Jehovah's administration, as to render it most eligible for this great judicial proceeding.

But his own absolute determination of this point shuts out all question; for "he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness." That day, as we have seen, will be neither before nor after, much less, long before, or long after the close of time; but at that point where time melts into eternity. It will not be after; for, while it will awake the dead, it will overtake the living. It will not be before; for, while it will overtake the living, it will awake the dead. It will be at that point upon which the living and the dead will rally; upon which the tides of finite and infinite ages rush.

That is the day that unfolds the scene of judgment; a scene that borrows no light from the vivid conflagration of earth and heaven. It will bring its own light; a light from which the earth and the heavens shall vanish. That is the day that sees the judgment throne, and Him that sitteth thereon; that sees the dead, small and great, stand before God; sees the opening of the book of life and the book of death; hears the names that are written therein; listens to their sentence; looks upon the gloomy procession of the condemned on their dark way to the mansions of the second death; sees the coronation of the heirs of heaven;

hears the coronation hymn; sees the flash of light from the opened portal of the eternal city, and the triumphal entry of the crowned nation of priests and kings, heralded with songs and shouts, and led on by the chariot of the King of kings, and all his attendant chariots, which are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels.

Such, venerable brethren, was the past, and such the future, as they presented themselves to this faithful minister of the Lord Jesus, at the hour of his departure. The past pours its cheering light upon the present; the future pours its radiance on it also; both reflow the past; reflow the present; and send the stream of their united effulgence on through the everlasting future.

Such be the hour of our departure. And thus, when that inevitable hour shall overtake us, may the past and the future unfold themselves to us! Amen.

SERMON XXVII.

The Wesleyan Reformation.

BY REV. B. F. TEFFT, A. M.,

EDITOR OF THE LADIES' REPOSITORY.

"I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed unto thy servant: for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands."-Gen. xxxii, 10.

THIS language is from the lips of the patriarch Jacob. He had served his time with Laban, his maternal uncle, and was returning with wealth and glory to the land of his fathers. His route led him near the north of Edom the country of his brother Esau. Being reasonably suspicious of the attachment of that brother, whom he had formerly supplanted, on reaching the borders of Edom he divided his flocks and attendants into two divisions; presuming by this means to save himself from utter extinction, should the wrath of his kinsman remain unabated. Sending large presents before him to appease the vengeance of his rival, he himself lingered in the rear of the company, to invoke

the interposition of Heaven by prayer and supplication. The language of the text is a part of his recorded devotions.

The feelings of the good patriarch may be more easily imagined than described. He had been twenty years from home. His success in a distant country had been the wonder of his new friends. It would be natural in Esau, who had had occasion for jealousy, and whose temper was probably less balanced than his brother's, to retain some unpleasant emotions. But the frankness and confidence of Jacob, in laying open to him his entire life and successes, perfectly removed or allayed them. With a generosity, which the founder of Idumea perhaps never wanted, as soon as he saw the force of his most fortunate brother, he ran to meet him, and, in the words of the inspired narrative, "embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." And the two brothers wept.

It would be difficult to decide which of the two deserved most for his conduct. Esau, with his four hundred men, perhaps warriors, could have taken summary vengeance for the loss of his birthright. Jacob, who might have entered Palestine at a point higher up, and thus avoided the danger, had the magnanimity to manifest a confidence little to be expected and seldom witnessed on such occasions. They proved by their mutual dignity of bearing, that the blood of a noble parent, at that moment coursing more proudly than ever in their veins, was a birthright which neither could relinquish.

From the past we turn our attention to the present. Let that scene be the type of another. As the old Jewish father, by the inheritance of the Abrahamic faith, became the head of the spiritual, not less than of the real, Israel; so, like him, Christianity has met with frequent occasions for giving to the world an account of its wonderful successes. Although prosperity in the church is always to be traced, in the last analysis, to the influences of the Holy Spirit, yet it is both Scriptural and consistent to speak of the secondary causes employed to produce it. And since, not only such distinguished men as Hume, Gibbon, and others, have attacked Christianity with some show of argument, on the side of these visible causes, but ordinary people are now every day thinking, if not reading, the very