those matters. It is in these counterfeits of power and of truth, that I foresee the great temptation of the latter days to consist. The church will be in this way sifted : the spirits will come and gather their followers; and Christ will come and gather his; and the strife shall be terrible in Armageddon. It will be on the very eve of the coming of Christ, and each man shall become his own judge, by betaking himself to his own banner. I believe that there has been nothing seen like that scene of spiritual confusion, which is just about to be manifested in Christendom. It shall become a Babel indeed, a confusion of tongues, a confusion of doctrines, and a confusion of spirits, until God shall no longer bear it; and "the city of confusion shall be broken up.' So far as the direful consequences are concerned, they are, I think, shewn forth in that provocation of God by the children of Israel, which, both by David and by Paul, is called "the day of temptation (Psa. xcv. 6; Heb. iii. 8). The point ascertained by that temptation in the wilderness was this; Who were worthy to go up into the promised land? And the way by which this was ascertained was through the report made of it by the spies. Those who made the good report, Caleb and Joshua, went in; those who followed the evil report made by the other spies, went not in, but perished in the wilderness. So deem I, that as many as gladly hear the everlasting Gospel, which is now preached over the world, "fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come;" those who apprehend the judgments and the Judge to be at the door, and are ready to welcome him, and enter into the inheritance; shall be delivered from the power of the seducers, being led by the Spirit of God into the truth: whereas those who say, That Jesus hath not come in flesh, and that he is not coming again in glory, or not until after a long time, and reject the call to prepare and go up with him, shall every one of them be seduced of the seducers. And by reason of their unbelief in the two great tests of evil spirits, they shall by evil spirits be utterly subverted. Those tests are, that Christ is come in the flesh, and that Jesus is the Lord of which the former is denied by those who assert that he had not the law of the flesh; the latter, by those who say that all power is from the people, or that the

people are lord, and not Jesus. The one of them is now leavening the ecclesiastical, the other the political state; and taken together, they are making void Christ's incarnation and his exaltation-that is, his work altogether-and leaving us a few scholastic terms, such as election, justification, and sanctification, to keep up the game and farce of religion with, until the invasion of the spirits of hell do prove that we are ripe for hell, and utterly alienated from the God of heaven. If those who hear and read these things, be amazed at the conception, which I have formed to myself of that direful hour of temptation, let them now give heed to the instructions of our great Bishop, as to the means by which the Philadelphian bishop and his flock are to be preserved from it: "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation."

The desert of this much-approved and rewarded man lay "in keeping the word of Christ's patience." This is a very remarkable expression, and, being compared with the other Scriptures, serveth much to confirm the conclusions to which we have already come concerning the hour of temptation. For, in connection with the great judgment of the earth and temptation of the church, we always find an especial call made upon the people of God for patience, as in Matt. xxiv. 13, "He that shall endure (be patient) unto the end shall be saved;" and in Luke xxi. 19, "In your patience possess ye your souls ;" and again on the annunciation of Babylon's overthrow, Rev. xiv. 12, "Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." These all bespeak a season during which, they who know their God shall be "tried and made white;" when they shall eagerly look for one of the days of the Son of Man, and shall not find it; when the expectation of Christ shall be so violent as that many false Christs shall arise and deceive many; when nothing shall preserve them from the snare and the pit and the fear, on all sides of them, save the most attentive study and diligent observation of Christ's own words concerning his coming. Which inclines me to think that the thing meant by "the word of Christ's patience" is the word of his coming again, which he hath commanded us patiently to look

for. If patience refer to the period of hoping, then, the end of the hope being his coming again, the word which speaks thereof may well be called the word of his patience. And to this agree many parts of Scripture: as the introduction of this very book, where John entitles himself "their companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ;" which I consider as parallel with that beautiful prayer of the Apostle for the zealous Thessalonians, "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and the patient waiting for Christ." In the Greek, it is "the patience of Christ;" that patience which he shewed on earth, and now sheweth in heaven, where he waits without impatience the times and seasons, which are wholly in his Father's hand; great example to his church of long-suffering with his enemies, and waiting for God's appointed time. Likewise that other passage in the viii th chapter of the Romans concerning the redemption of the body and the manifestation of the sons of God, the liberation of the creature, and the other parts of the one hope of our calling: "for if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." I do greatly err, therefore, if this word of Christ's patience be not the word of the promise of his appearing; which shall then be very dear unto his people, who are commanded to hold up their heads because their redemption draweth nigh; while to all others it shall be as a dream, as a doating of vain and speculative men, insomuch that it shall be a question whether there be faith upon the earth. To be keeping the word of Christ's patience, is therefore, as I think, to be holding fast the hope of his coming in the midst of a generation of scoffers, who shall be saying, "Where is the hope of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world." That such who are looking for his appearing shall receive deliverance in that day, is sufficiently declared in all the Scriptures: "To those who look for him shall he appear the second time without sin ́unto salvation;" and is embodied into the beautiful parable of the Virgins, whereof only those, who had been keeping the word of his patience hidden in their hearts, were found in a state of preparation for the marriage supper of the Lamb. Ah me! if this be the true interpretation,

how few are there who may look for deliverance; if so be that deliverance be given, not to all who believe in the second coming of the Lord, but only to those who are hiding that blessed hope in their hearts, and patiently looking for the appearing of the great God and our Saviour! As to those who think they are expecting Christ, by preaching that he is to come after a thousand years, at the end of all things, it is like saying that a young man is expecting death who is believing that he shall live till four-score; or that a woman is expecting the birth of her child, when many months of her time is yet to run. And yet they will go about, with bare and brazen face, and say, We also are expecting Christ some thousand years after this. If any but God were thus entreated, he would make short work with such hypocrites. But, setting them to a side, as thorough unbelievers in this doctrine altogether, as the perverters of it, and the persecutors of those who believe in it; and applying ourselves to those that are sincerely and honestly expecting Christ's advent, as a thing at hand, and very much to be desired for God's glory and the world's well-being; alas! how few even of this fragment of the church are in the state described in our text, "of keeping the word of Christ's patience!" I know that to some of us, and preachers too, it is an opinion which we condescend to patronize, and will occasionally contend for, though we would be far from being understood to make much of it; to others it is a conviction of the understanding, gathered from an honest study of the Scriptures, but not digested into principles and motives of holy living; lying stored up in the mind but not living in the heart, or calling forth the energies of the soul. To how few, alas! is it the consolation of adversity, the hope of the reformation of all abuses, the end and determination of all adversities and afflictions, the winding up of all inextricable disorders, the joy of the whole earth, and the deliverance of all the elements of nature! There is, indeed, a wonderful voice gone forth over this land; and the echo of it now, after five years of preaching, returneth to me from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Doubtless it will bear wonderful fruit, as the doctrine of justification by faith did heretofore at the Reformation and around this root will grow the historical

antitype of the Philadelphian church; while the rejectors of this precious hope, whose voice is lifted up throughout Christendom, will throw the rest into the historical antitype of the Laodicean state of the church. As the rejection of the doctrine of justification by faith brought the Roman church to be, what since the Council of Trent we have seen it, a lifeless frozen lump of error, so will the rejection of Christ's coming in his glory cast the churches called Reformed into that fruitless, miserable, and abandoned condition, foreshewn and forewarned in the church of Laodicea. I see these things in their beginnings, and I take as it were their fluxionary expression; and, being now somewhat accustomed to the ratios of ecclesiastical affairs, I am able to calculate the effects which will in a very few years be produced. For speed, whirlwind speed, is the characteristic of the times in which we live. The work of centuries is now doing in a day; because it is the time of settling the account and bringing the indignation to an end. There is no longer any resistance or re-action; all the bands of society are loosed; and the machine will whirl round with unabating violence, till it shall have broken itself to pieces. But, in the midst of the consternation and confusion, there shall be a few calm, collected people, who with heads lifted up and patient countenances, are looking on and suffering, and speaking to their neighbours of a Redeemer near at hand, who shall set all to rights again, and reconstitute the world in eternal beauty and blessedness. When shall he come?' is the cry. Be patient,' is his answer. 'Is this he whom we hear of in the secret chamber, or is this he in the desert place?' No, he shall not so appear; but, like the lightning, which all heaven and earth beholdeth, and with the vultures's sure discernment of her prey, shall we make flight to meet him.' Great, I doubt not, will be the trials of his servants; I know not but Satan may succeed in casting upon them the blame of the evil accidents which are happening around; as upon the first Christians, who, whether a famine raged in the provinces or a fire in the city, had all the odium and guilt to bear and so also it fared with the Reformers, whose doctrines, Satan contrived to implicate in the minds of rulers with the Anabaptist levellers of the ranks and distinctions of society. The more need have we of watchfulness and