give way to the dominant power of wealth, if the temptations to which this great commercial country is specially liable, shall gain the ascendancy; if we work men to death that we may be the more speedily rich; if we shall cheat and deceive in order to become wealthy; if we spend and be spent, from early morning to late night, not even excepting the Sunday, in order to accumulate riches; if we shall make trade and commercial prosperity the first thing, instead of being the second thing, it will need no Balaam to curse us; the blessing will depart, and our soldiers and sailors will say to themselves, ours is a country not worth defending; and they will leave us to learn the bitter lesson, that while righteousness exalteth a people, yet sin is the ruin and the shame of any people.

Let me ask of you to address this prayer to him, who can turn that prayer into perfect and lasting results: "Search me, O God, and know me, and try my heart, and see if there be any wicked way of Balaam in me, and lead me out of it into the way everlasting." It is most important to be justified, and we are justified by a Saviour's righteousness only; but it is only second, if second it be, to be sanctified by God's Holy Spirit. Justification relates to the safety of the individual ; sanctification relates to the spread, and progress, and prosperity of the Church, and mankind that are around us at large. Let us, therefore, pray not only that the past may be forgiven, but that the future may be holy. Let us learn from the whole history, character, and ruin of Balaam, that sin is the germ of evil, and righteousness alone, the joy and happiness of the individual, as well as of a nation. And let us pray for that glorious

epoch, when Balak shall no longer sit upon imperial thrones, when Balaam shall no longer occupy prophets' chairs; but when all the people shall be righteous, and the Prince of Peace shall reign from sea to sea, and the whole earth shall be filled with his glory, and all flesh shall see what they have tasted in its earnest-the salvation of our God.

CHAPTER III.

WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING?

THIS chapter, in the Second Epistle of Peter, is one of the most striking, impressive, and I may add, suggestive, of all the chapters contained in the New Testament. Peter tells them that this Second Epistle, which he closes with this chapter, he has written to those Christian persons scattered throughout the world, to whom he addressed it, in order to stir up their sincere-for that is the strict meaning of the word—their sincere or teachable minds "by way of remembrance;" that is, by way of reminding them of those grand truths which he had previously taught, and which he now proceeds to give an epitome of. He says, first of all, "That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets;" recognising the words of the prophets as the inspiration of God, "Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And then, mark you, the clause that he adds, "and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour;" showing, that what the apostles wrote is to be placed exactly on the same level with what the prophets taught; in other words, that the inspiration of Peter is precisely the same as that of Isaiah; and that both their writings are to be regarded and to be read as the inspiration and the teaching of the Spirit of God.

Then he says, "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers," persons that deride religion, that will not listen to the warnings of the prophetic word; but who will be constantly saying, saying it in perfect contempt, "Where is the promise of Christ's coming?" You will notice throughout the whole New Testament, that the second personal advent of our blessed Lord is alluded to as the hope of all believers. Almost every duty and every encouragement is sustained and strengthened by an allusion to that blessed and glorious hope. Now Peter says, that when the ministers of Christ shall give warning, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh;" or when they shall call attention to the startling scenes and striking phenomena of the age, as trumpet-tongued heralds of that great era, which comes nearer every day; that certain scoffers, the caricaturists of the day, will laugh at them, and turn what they say into ridicule, and make fun out of them, and find in them a capital out of which to weave jokes for the amusement of the thoughtless, and the ungodly, and the unthinking of the world. That will be the condition of things. So that you may depend upon it, that whenever any one shall study the prophetic word, and speak most soberly, most guardedly, as becomes fallible man; but speak, at the same time, what he believes to be the era at which we are arrived, the phenomena by which we are surrounded, their significance, according to the prophetic word; you may calculate upon it that every worldly newspaper will turn into ridicule what is said; and they themselves, by doing so, will be the striking fulfilment of the prediction, that in the last days scoffers shall come, saying, "Where is the promise of his coming?" That is to say, where is

the sign of it? It is all nonsense. What do you mean by interpreting that as having any significance ? An earthquake has happened in Naples; it has killed 20,000 human beings; it has shattered all Italy; it has convulsed the Peninsula; the dead and the dying are mingled together, and the shrieks and cries of the sufferers are entering into the ears of the powers that be in that country.

Do we say instantly, Christ said, "There shall be earthquakes in divers places?" Are we told in the Apocalypse that there shall be one great earthquake during the seventh vial, so startling that it will call all men's attention to it? I do not say that the one at Naples or at Rio Janeiro is it; I have not the least doubt it is one of the premonitory ones; and we shall have a yet more terrific and more startling one. How striking is the fact, and I always rejoice to call attention to such facts, a secular newspaper has stated, that we ourselves stand upon a soil just as precarious as that of Italy; and we know not when the next shock shall come, that may lay the proudest capitals, and gorgeous palaces, and cloudcapped towers in ruin, and leave scarcely a wreck behind. But, nevertheless, the world will say on to the end, "It is all nonsense! where is the sign of all this? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were. The sun rises and sets, the tides ebb and flow, the rains fall, and the winds blow, and the law of gravitation lasts, and all things continue precisely as they were from the beginning." But what is the defect in this reasoning? They argue from the fixity of God's procedure, which is the very evidence of his greatness, that God is simply fate, and nothing more;