the last time I saw you it was in a gambling-house, or a drinking-place, and now I see you placed by the Judge on the right hand while I am on the left! How came you there?' And the answer will be: 'Yes, it is true; but by the grace of God I am where I am. It was the grace of God on that Sunday night which led me from the haunts of sin to a place where I heard of the love and mercy of a Saviour, and I felt that I could not go on treating Him with disdain and contempt; and then I knelt down for the first time for many a long year and prayed, and God heard my prayer, and kept me safe after that until He called me here; and by the grace of God I am where I am.' Ah, and will there not be a companion to that one? Will there not be others who will say, 'The last time I saw you was on Confirmation Day, kneeling before the Bishop, receiving his blessing-God's blessing, and God's Holy Spirit! The last time I saw you was in the early morning, in the church, giving your first and best worship to God, and now I see you going away among the lost!' And what will he say? 'Yes, it is too true. I was pure once, but I was led away, or I led myself away' (for when that great day comes we shall not be so ready to credit other people with leading us away); 'and I went from bad to worse, and then, when I least expected it, the end came '-whether it was the fall of a tree, or a brick off a house, or a steamer that went down, or a death from fever. 'I was struck down before

I had time to turn back, and I am here. It is my own fault.'

And there will be contrasts there. There will be the poor man, the man who had been rejected by the world, sitting among the princes-yes, among the princes of God's own choosing and God's own making! There will be the rich man, the man who had all that he needed on earth-and there is no sin in that-but who did not profit by it or use it to the glory of God, but returned the gift by base ingratitude, and now he has his place with the wicked, while others taste the bliss of heaven.

These are a few of the thoughts which I believe would help us all if we would but take them home with us. I believe they would help us all to look at that day as we ought to look at it; and if they so help us, surely then they will also help us to look at this life, not as a passing moment but in the light of the great eternity which comes after that day, and on which our happiness depends.

Oh, my friends, it is difficult, as I have so often said, it is difficult to feel these things, but it is harder to let them influence our lives. If you and I to-night, as we think of Advent Sunday and the Second Coming of Christ, think also of His first coming-if we only think of how He came first in love, in tenderness, in self-sacrifice, surely that love will win us, will strengthen us to beat down the sin which keeps us back! surely the man who to-day

thinks about religion will to-morrow carry it out in his life! surely those who have come a little way will make up their minds to come further! Only if we strive and pray shall we be able to meet that day when it comes without fear.

And does any one say, 'What a hopeless picture you have painted! I have too long neglected God. How can there be hope for me in the face of such realities as these?' Remember the story of the poor, sinning, outcast girl, who, because she could not bear to face her sin and face her mother, ran away from home, and who tasted of the cup of misery which sin brings-not only to a man but, oh so much more to a woman-and then one night went back to the old home, only to look at it before she put an end to what to her had become a life no longer worth living, and hardly better than the death which she would have to die. And then, when she reached the door, and saw a light in the window, she said within herself, 'Shall I go in and see if they are up? But no, they cannot be; they never used to be.' And she put her hand upon the latch, which yielded to her touch. She opened the door, she went in and looked round the room where she had so often sat, where she had listened to her mother's pleadings in the days when pleadings seemed as if they would avail, and she said, 'I am here-I won't go back-I will go a little further.' So she roused her mother, and then, when they were talking about it afterwards-for she

stayed in the old home-she said to her mother, 'How was it that the door was open in the middle of the night, when you used always to be so careful to shut it?' And the mother said, 'Since you have been away that door has never been closed by night or by day, because I never gave up hope that you would come back.'

My friends, no matter how far we have wandered, no matter how deep may have been the sin of any one of us, if we will only turn to God tonight we can obtain pardon. 'Knock, and it shall be opened unto you; ask, and ye shall have ;' and the peace which we have lost will come back, the love which we have thrown away will once more be given to us, for the sake of Jesus Christ.

XII.

'And every man went unto his own house.'-St. John, vii. 53. 'Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.'-Ibid. viii. 1.

I

SUPPOSE that those of us, if there are any such here, who have in some distant country a friend whom we have never seen, from whom we have heard often, and of whom we have thought much, must frequently in our quiet moments have striven to picture to ourselves what that friend is like. We have read his letters-his thoughts on paper, as letters really are-and have tried to sketch to ourselves the portrait of that friend; and as we have in our possession, every one of us, the Letters of Jesus Christ, as we have His own very words treasured up by those who were dearest to Him, and to whom He was most dear; as we read those words, as we hear them read, surely there must at times arise in our minds a wish that we could, as we have been singing, 'see Him as He is;' and I doubt not that we have tried to picture what He is like. Many Many a painter has essayed this task; many a painter, as we think, has succeeded. And in our National Gallery, and in the great continental galleries, we see the works of