always watching, always guarding us, moment by moment. From our first hours of real responsibility to our last breath, the successive variations of our exact moral condition have been registered with faultless accuracy in the tablets of the eternal mind. It is not to be supposed for a moment that a day is yet to come, on which, like some human judge traveling on the circuit, He, the Eternal, will discover for the first time, by some laborious legal process-by arguments pleaded before Him, or from the examination of witnesses-what manner of men we severally are. "Thou art about my path, and about my bed, and spiest out all my ways, for, lo, there is not a word in my tongue but thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether." No, but on that day-the day of the Lord-the day of judgmentwhat is always true will become, so to speak, visible, palpable, acknowledged-will inflict itself with a terrific and resistless force upon the reluctant senses and imaginations of men. "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats." "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." "Every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and all the kindreds of the world shall wail because of Him." "We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive for the things done in his body according to that which he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

"The day of the Lord." They tell us nowadays that this is only the Christian form of the old pagan fable about. Minos and Rhadamanthus. It were better to say that those pagan fables were broken rays of light spreading through the kingdom of darkness from one original truth-a truth which Christendom has since received in its fulness from the Father of Lights. The pagan fable about the judgment is related to Christ's revelation of the judgment, just as the pagan Olympus is related to the Christian heaven-just as the dread of a future world of punishment which haunts the conscience and the literature of paganism through so many centuries is related to the Christian revelation of hell. On this side is the truth; on that is its mutilation or its caricature, or its dim presentiment ainid the clouds and the darkness. But the original truth is not the less true because it is buried away here or there beneath the typical forms of pagan error. It is the human conscience, after all, taught by God's primitive revelation in nature, which in some distant age has so buried it; and the Christian Church does but give clear, full expression to a certainty of which

heathenism is always, more or less, mindful-the certainty that we men must be judged, when with St. Paul at Athens she proclaims year after year and century after century that "God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained whereof He hath given assurance unto all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead."

And the day of the Lord will come, we are told, as a thief in the night. What are the ideas which this comparison is meant, or calculated, to suggest to us?

"As a thief in the night." To most men this comparison will be suggestive, first of all, of fear. A thief enters a house at night under circumstances, and with an object, which create natural alarm. He knows what he wants. He is aided by the darkness. He is prepared to carry out his purpose. He has anticipated resistance. He has taken his measures. Even if he should meet a man upon the staircase as resolute and as well prepared as himself—even if he should have in the end to make his escape without effecting his purpose-his coming of itself cannot but be regarded with much apprehension and disquiet. And the first class of feelings which must arise at the thought of the second coming of Christ must be of the same character. The old prophets Joel and Malachi, who, gazing over the horizon of some nearer judgments, described as yet afar off across the ages the coming day of universal doomspoke of it as the great and terrible day of the Lord-spoke of it as the great and dreadful day. And we with the gospel of mercy and salvation in our hands-we cannot but echo their language. We cannot but own that we, too, are afraid of God's judgments, to us more definitely revealed. Yes, it is certain, since the word of Christ is pledged thereto-it is certain that a day will come in which the fear of the Lord and the glory of His majesty will be brought before His creatures as never before.

We shall witness this day, each one of us-the old and the young, the foolish and the wise, the saved and the lost. As surely as we have seen this morning's sunlight we shall hereafter behold the eternal Judge upon His throne, the countless multitudes before Him, the division between His creatures deep and irreversible, the disciplined activities of His angels, the issues on this side and on that, as all gradually settles down into the last unchangeable award. Great artists have dared to portray that day-in a past age, Michael Angelo-in this, Cornelius; but in the presence of that scene the highest art is powerless. It must content itself at best with snatches of bliss and snatches of agony - with glimpses and fragments of a scene too vast, too sublime, too terrific to submit to the conditions of even the highest art. Scripture is always far in advance of

anything that art can attempt on such a subject: and as we follow its disclosures we can but exclaim

"Great God, what do I see and hear?

The end of things created!

The Judge of all men doth appear

On clouds of glory seated.

The trumpet sounds, the graves restore

The dead which they contained before."

And then we add, "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified."

But is this all? Surely, surely not! The last word of the gospel is not fear, but love. It is not disquiet, but peace. If we will, the Judge upon His throne may be our friend and Saviour-the angels the ministers not of His justice, but of His grace; and we ourselves, instead of calling on the mountains to cover us and on the rocks to fall on us, may be bold to look up to Him and to lift up our heads, conscious that at last our redemption draweth nigh. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect," even in that supreme moment? "It is God that justifieth them." "Who is He that condemneth them? It is Christ that died; yea, rather, that is risen again, who also sitteth at the right hand of God, where He liveth to make intercession for us.' The question is, What are our relations to Him now-what our faith, our love, our repentance? It is in the spring that the autumn crops are sown. It is in youth that the fortunes of life are shaped. It is during the years of time that men decide how they will meet the judgment and that which follows it.

"As a thief in the night." Another truth which is suggested by the figure is the suddenness of the advent. There is the contrast which it will present to many of God's judgments in this present life. They approach us with measured steps. We see them coming; we calculate the pace of their advance. We know almost to a moment when and how they will be upon us-when and how they will spend themselves; for they reach us through the world of nature or through the world of man, and the natural and human world lie open to our observations, and we know something of the laws that govern them. Take those three judgments which are not seldom put together in the Bible-war, famine, pestilence. Neither of these comes upon us altogether as a robber into the house at night. Before the war breaks out we see the causes which are increasingly likely to provoke it. Those which are permanent and in the nature of things-those which belong to the periodthe antipathies of race, the aspirations or the wrongs of nations, the influence and bias of leading men, the pressure of circumstance, the drift of currents of popular feeling.

The cloud darkens gradually before it bursts-at least, so gradually that the exception seems to prove the rule. And

so with famine. We observe in particular conditions of the atmosphere that which will produce a failure of the crops over a wide extent of fertile country. We know that this failure, in the absence of sufficient communications by land or water, will lead to famine in particular districts; and thus many months, at least, elapse after the first apprehensions of the coming trial before its pressure is actually felt. So it is, to a certain extert at least, even with pestilence-at any rate, with a large number of fatal epidemic disorders. When the Asiatic cholera last visited this country, its gradual advance from city to city across Europe was noted just as if it had been a great personage on his travels, whose movements might be almost anticipated, who was said to be on his way to visit England. And we know that a hot season or a great abundance of raw fruit, or bad sanitary arrangements in a crowded town, will bring fever in their train; and when the outbreak occurs it is impossible to say that it is unexpected. Neither war nor famine nor pestilence comes on man, generally speaking, like the thief in the night. But with the second coming of Jesus Christ it will be otherwise. There are, indeed, certain signs visible to the skilled sight of faith unobserved by those who walk by sight-signs which will precede the advent-signs in the world of thought and in the world of nature-widespread, intellectual confusion, political and social perplexity, material ruin— "signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations and perplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear." Nay, as St. Paul says to the Thessalonians in his second letter, when they had understood his first words on the subject too narrowly, there will be a falling away from the Christian faith and the coming of one person who will embody all the hostilities toward God that are scattered throughout human nature and human history-the antichrist. No such person answering to the apostolic description would seem yet to have appeared, though thoughtful and religious minds do recognize in the present circumstances of the world signs of his possible approach. But his appearance and all that follows him will be sudden enough, and he, we are told, will be consumed by the breath of the mouth of Christ and destroyed at the brightness of His coming. And thus, in reality, of that day and that hour knoweth no man, but the Father which is in heaven. We only know that it will come when men least expect it; that it will be the fullest justification of the proverb, Nothing is probable except the unforeseen."

Are we looking out for it? To keep watch for that which is certain which will come unexpectedly-which will affect us most intimately-is surely only common sense. We know how it is in ordinary life. I am thinking of a man who has been told that a relation may return any day from a distant colony,

and raise questions in the law courts which will imperil his own right to his entire property. This man cannot help giving a great deal of thought to this expected rival. The mind reverts to the topic when he has nothing else to do. He looks morning by morning at the list of ships which arrive or sail. He knows the main lines of packets by heart. He takes quite a new interest in the weather, in the telegraphic accounts of storms, in the accounts of recent voyages which other travelers have made. The whole subject is full of practical interest for him. His thoughts settle around it by a kind of mental gravitation which needs no outward exhortation or impulse to second its force. The second coming of our Lord and Saviour is much more certain than that of the colonist in question, who may be drowned or may die long ere he can touch the shores of England. But are we looking out for it? It may not come to us on this side of the grave; it will, practically, have come to us at death. At once certain and uncertain-certain as to its reality, uncertain as to its date-it bids us, at least, keep watch for it. A Christian's first practical anxiety should be expressed in his Master's words, "Lest coming suddenly He find me sleeping."

"As a thief in the night." The figure suggests, lastly, that which cannot be prevented by any efforts of our own. The man whose house is broken into may resist the thief: he cannot ward off the attack by preventive measures. To do this he should be in the confidence of his assailant, whereas it is his assailant's purpose to keep him in the dark. And here again there is a contrast between the second coming and those visitations which I have already noticed. In presence of the approach of war, of famine, of pestilence, man is very far from being powerless. Not merely can he do much to limit the range of these disasters; he can do much to prevent them. What is war? War is the product of human misconduct-of human ambitions, human greed, human cruelty, human injustice. Let these be curbed-be cured-by the advancing gospel, and wars will become first rare and then impossible. What is famine? Famine is, at least, not seldom, the consequence of want of foresight, of bad communications, of reckless administration, of wasteful expenditure. As these are corrected by the industry and resolution of mankind-I do not dare to say that famine will never occur-I do say that it will be in not a few cases prevented. What is pestilence? Pestilence is constantly the product of bad air, bad drainage, bad food, close, fetid, unwholesome dwelling-houses. It may be checked-nay, often it may be arrested altogether-by that physical knowledge and skill which is so great a gift of God to this our modern world, by removing conditions that assist infection, by promptly confronting the very first symptoms of disease with its remedy or its antidote. But as against the