enemy pours into the kingdom like a desolating flood, storming city after city, repulsing force after force, and marking all their steps with devastation, rapine, and slaughter. This was the first plague, the punishment of the king in his deluded and apostate people. But it is only the beginning of troubles; for his ears are dull of hearing, and the call of judgment is unobeyed. The enemy presses resistlessly forward. The royal army is everywhere beaten and dispersed. In a few days the heathen invaders are at the gates of Jerusalem. The city is taken, the remnant of the Jewish army is scattered, the palace itself is stormed and plundered, the royal treasure carried off, and the royal family taken prisoners. All his wives, with the exception of Athaliah, who was reserved for a more tragical end, are led away into captivity, and even his sons are banished from their native land. Only one remains behind, Joash the youngest, for the Lord hath respect to his promise, “David shall never want a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel." All the rest are doomed to a miserable bondage. Alarming example of the righteous judgment of God! Behold "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The destroyer of the people becomes the object of their execration. The avaricious robber is stripped utterly naked by robbers' hands. The denier of Jehovah and his word is denied by Him in return, and given up to his own way. The debauchee and fratricide is visited with the loss of his own wives and children. But the train of his disasters is not yet complete. His intense selfishness might perhaps have taught him to bear these heavy strokes too lightly, and therefore he must suffer in his own person. The horrible disease predicted by the prophet, soon appears and manifests itself \o every one as a visible judgment of heaven. For two years it continued without remission, and baffled all the skill of the physicians; "and it came to pass, after the end of two years, that his bowels fell out, by reason of his sickness; and he died. His people made no burning for him, like the burning of his fathers. Howbeit they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings."

Thus was the writing of doom accomplished to the very letter; and not a syllable of it remained unfulfilled. Mark this, ye impenitent sinners that are still far from God! A writing like that prophetic one lies also at your door. It begins, "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him!" It continues, "The lamp of the wicked shall be put out, and their feet hasten to destruction." It concludes, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." And its signature is this, "Thus speaks the true and faithful Witness." Well may you tremble, for none of His words fall to the ground. But, blessed be his name, the threatening is not unconditional. It only runs thus, "If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart." Therefore rejoice in thy respite, O sinner, and thy hope of escape. The manslayer is behind thee, but there is a city of refuge. Lay hold on the hope set before thee in the gospel. Repair to the cross of Jesus, and thou shalt see the hand-writing of doom nailed to that cross; and instead of it thou shalt receive another writing into thy bosom, which bears the gracious words, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee! for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, and thou art mine."—Amen.

IX.-THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION.

I know no second example, among all the sons of men, of one to whom such a superabundance of honour and glory has been granted, as to that man on whose eventful history* which stretches very near a thousand years, we have for some time been dwelling with delight. After he had, at the close of an incomparable series of miracles and splendid deeds, passed into heaven without tasting of death, and been fixed by the hand of God himself as a bright and cheering star in the Old Testament sky, for the joy and hope of many generations, new lustre is all at once thrown upon his wou

derful character, four hundred years after his departure from earth, by his being introduced as a principal figure into the transporting picture, filled up with inspired lines and colours of that glorious period which Abraham rejoiced to see afar off, and which many prophets and kings had desired to witness. Malachi, the prophet of God, thus spoke in Israel, in the name of Jehovah, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dread. ful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse," Mal. iv. 5, 6.

Elijah, recalled, as it were, by this striking prophecy from the ages of the past, now shone as a distant light in the future, and became one of the dearest objects of Israel's expectation. The saints, thenceforth, beheld him in the spiritual horizon as a harbinger of the dayspring from on high, as an inseparable attendant of the glorious Son of David. For four hundred years had Elijah thus shone in the apocalyptic heaven, when at last the Sun of Righteousness arose on our benighted earth, and reflected the light of truth on all the shadows of prophecy. A voice in the wilderness is heard to announce that the kingdom of heaven is at hand; and so the Lord of the kingdom appears; and in reference to this herald of his approach declares," If ye will receive it; this is Elias which was for to come." Malachi's prophecy was, therefore, now fulfilled; and yet only figuratively, and by way of prelude. That the whole meaning of the prophecy was not yet exhausted, is manifest from our Lord's language, "If ye will receive it!" and still more distinctly from the declaration of John the Baptist himself. "I am not Elias." John was called Elias, merely because he appeared in the spirit and power of Elijah; and there can be no doubt that the word's of Malachi point to a personal return of the prophet to earth. This has always been the belief and expectation of the Jews; and thus Jesus the sou of Sirach appears to have understood the prophecy, as we gather from his animated apostrophe in the 48th chap

ter of his apocryphal book. "Thou, Elias, wast taken up in a whirlwind of fire, and a chariot of fiery horses; who wast ordained for reproof in its season, to pacify the wrath of the Lord's judgment before it broke forth into fury, and to turn the hearts of the fathers unto the sons, and to restore the tribes of Jacob. Blessed are they that see thee, and shall be honoured on account of thy friendship; then shall we possess the true life."

And lo! ere we think of it, the ancient prophet himself is before us in a bodily form, after the rest of a thousand years above. He stands on the Mount of Transfiguration, with Moses at his side, and both of them engaged in sacred conference with the Lord of glory. And yet, amazing and unexampled as is the scene, I doubt if even this event exhausted the full meaning of Malachi's prophecy. He was to come "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers." Now he has not yet executed this commission; and, consequently, the ancient prophecy leaves us to expect a still farther accomplishment. It is already fulfilled in a typical manner; but its entire fulfilment is what I think we have not yet seen. Are we then still to expect a return of Elias? For my part I cannot avoid this conclusion, and I am inclined to place the event before the conversion and restoration of Israel, when he will probably appear upon the earth in his glorified person, to accomplish a great work both for the Jews, and, through them, for the Gentile world.

How wonderful to find a man who thus keeps upon the stage of the world's history for thousands of years; and passes, though a son of the dust, with equal ease from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, to fulfil the great designs of Him whose minister he is! "O, Elijah, how art thou honoured," may we say with the son of Sirach, "which of as is to be praised like unto thee! Blessed are they that see thee, and will be honoured on account of thy friendship." Yet even thou, what art thou but a satellite shining with borrowed light, and reflecting the grace and love of Christ to sinners of our race!

We are this day to approach the "holy mount." It is a delightful pilgrimage. No mountain has a serener sky or a fairer prospect. May the way be blessed to our souls!

MATTHEW xvil 1, 2.

"And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them; and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light''

The wonderful event here recorded is, beyond all question, a real and not an ideal history. The account of the evangelists, who all concur in this narrative, is enough to show this. This event is a scene in the life of the incarnate God among men. What wonder, then, that it should pass beyond all the limits of ordinary experience, and present to us, the children of a day, much that is unprecedented and incomprehensible. Let joy, rather than idle amazement or curiosity, fill our hearts at this glorious spectale. Lo, here is something more than the fiery sign on Carmel, the burning bush at Horeb, and the flaming glories of Sinai. "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

Let us approach with reverence this sublime scene; and may the Spirit of the Lord disclose to us the depths of its meaning. We contemplate for the present, I. The probable design of the transfiguration. II. The preparations for the event. III. The event itself.

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I. In the narrative of the evangelists, the transfiguration of our Lord is connected with a conversation with his disciples, which occurred almost immediately before, at Cesarea Philippi, when the Lord was just about to commence his last journey through the country to Jerusalem. "Whom," said he to his disciples, "do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" They replied, "Some say thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeiemias, or one of the prophets." Their master answered, "Whom say ye that I am?" Peter, in a moment of fervent inspiration from above, breaks forth with the noble confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus receives