"And

It is when we see that Christ died for dead people people DEAD IN SINS-that we have the true light beginning to shine into us. The dead are shut up to God for life; for only God can give life. we, being dead in trespasses, are made alive together with Him..... having forgiven you all the trespasses. ." I know that strait, indeed, is this gate, and narrow, indeed, the way, and that few there be that find it; but except ye enter it ye are yet in your sins.

And do we not now see what repentance is? Repentance is a change of mind. It is a change about God. It is a change in us. What a change of mind respecting the Queen my poor felon had !-what a revulsion in himself. Grace got into his heart, and wrought all manner of change there. But there had been no change had he not received the grace. The carnal mind sees nothing good of God. When the Gospel reveals, and the Spirit shows, that Christ died for us, we not only see God in a new aspect, but what the eye sees the heart is moved to feel." For God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Hence we have another heart, by grace, quite opposed to the old heart, by nature, whose presence, alas! within us is still prone to unbelief. Repentance is not merely sorrow. It is surely that; but it is more. It affects the whole life. Doctrine, experience, life, all find their centre in the returned prodigal. It were a pleasant task, as he rests enfolded in his father's arms, or is seated, in silent wonder, at his father's table, to make inquiry into the change that had befallen him-how hateful his old life; how blessed the new! Surely, over the scene where he sat might be read the inscription, "BY GRACE ARE YE SAVED." Wondrous grace! Wondrous love!

ADDRESS XVIII.

THE TIMES AND SEASONS.

"But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night."-1 THESS. v. 1 to end.

THE Apostle reckoned that the Thessalonians knew the truth concerning both the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ for His saints, as He had promised in the fourteenth of John, and His subsequent coming in judgment to the world. Concerning the first of these, "Ye show what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven." And, beloved saints, what I want you to do is, that you keep your eye fixed, not so much on the past, not so much on any memories, painful or pleasant, that you may have of the life which now lies behind you—not on any of the experiences even of your past spiritual life, nor yet so much on your present trials or pursuits, but on the hope the Lord Himself has given you, that He who once ascended will again descend and take us to Himself, that where He is there we may be also.

He will come not then as Judge for judgment on the world, but as Son from heaven, to receive us to Himself; and also as Head, to take up the Church, which is His body, which then will have become complete. This-the Lord's coming for us-is our special hope. It was that for which the Thessalonians were waiting,

and it is that which, in our Christian history, may next occur. The Lord may come at any moment, and, however the world may disbelieve it, the saints long absent from their Lord will see Him in the heavens, and will be caught up to meet Him.

If I am now speaking to any who has been buffeted by trials-and where is there a believer of any standing or experience who has not gone through many depths and vicissitudes, perhaps of temporal, but surely of spiritual trial?-if I am speaking to such, I would say, Let not your minds be inordinately occupied with what is gone, left for ever behind you, nor yet with what is now present with you, but with what the Apostle refers to, when he says, "Ye show what manner of entering in we had unto you, how ye turned from dumb idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven." Paul could have said, I did not compromise any truth; I did not keep back any hope concerning the saints. Ye know my manner of entering in unto you, and how, as the result of the word preached, ye turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven."

In the fourth chapter he had been telling these disciples that the Lord would descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, or of a chief messenger, and the trump of God, and that on the arrival of the message from His lips, the dead in Christ should rise first, and that those who were alive and remained till the coming of the Lord should not prevent or precede those that were asleep, but were to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so they would be for ever with the Lord. Then, as if in his statement of things he had turned a mighty corner where other truths would break on his view, he adds, "But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord"-a day subsequent to that of which

he had been speaking-" so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say peace and safety, sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."

It is thus we see what were these times and seasons? I have often said that properly we have no dispensation, that we come in between the dispensations. We stand between the prophets and patriarchs, who looked for a reigning Messiah, on the one hand, and the time when the earth will see that Messiah in millennial glory, on the other. It is during this interlude that we have our place. We are not of the Jewish dispensation-nor are we of the millennium. We have not been looking for a temporal Messiah, nor are we to be of that earthly kingdom over which He will reign. When He comes in that kingdom, we are to come with Him. When He appears in glory to take it, we shall appear with Him in glory.

Says Paul, there is no need to write of times and seasons to you. Saints had heard of times of glory and of joy, times of millennial splendour on the earth; also, as preceding such times, times of great tribulation.

In the twenty-fourth of Matthew our Lord shows what would be the character of that time on earth which would lie between the present and His public coming to the world. This He does in answer to the questionWhat shall be the sign of Thy presence and of the full end of the age?

The disciples had found, him sitting on the Mount of Olives, and being anxious, as we ourselves would have been, to know the character of the future, they asked Him. In his reply He tells them-and it is here from the lips of HIM who knew, not in the mere conjectures of men that we get to know what is to come in the future-that there would be wars and rumours of wars, that nation would rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, that there would be

famines and pestilences and earthquakes in divers places; that such would be the beginning-not of a better age -not of a millennium-but "of sorrows." For then, instead of His disciples making the best of this world, or being at rest in it, He says of them:- "They shall deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you, and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake."

After this, at eleventh verse, He says there shall be false prophets, and the love of many shall wax cold, but that the good news shall be proclaimed in all the world for a testimony (its longed-for conversion not being yet), and that then shall the end of the age, or dispensation, arrive; at that end, as given in detail in last chapters of Zechariah, Jerusalem (the Jews having been gathered to their own land) will be besieged, the abomination of desolation, Antichrist, the man of sin, will take possession, and a great tribulation ensue, such as never has been since the beginning of the world. And then, immediately after the tribulation, we have what? Millennium? No. Peace? No. But that of which my chapter treats-the coming to the earth, as we believe, of the Son of Man.

But these latter, He speaks of as a day-the day of the Lord, which day comes in as all other days come, by first dealing with night, and displacing its darkness, and then itself to reign. The coming of that day will be solemn, dreadful, sudden: "Ye, yourselves, know perfectly, that the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night." A thief comes suddenly, a thief gives no notice of his coming; so the Lord gives no notice other than this testimony of His love, that is, to the world, a sinful world, lying in darkness, and loving to have it so. But "ye," says Paul, 66 are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief." As the Lord, on the plains of Mamre, told Abraham beforehand the doom coming on Sodom, so, in His word, hath He told us of the doom coming on this