unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ."

How the Lord will purify Jerusalem, purge away her sin ere her light will shine, we shall see. And now in these days, darkening around us, what is it we want?-We want power, force of knowledge, and utterance for doctrine-for instruction in righteousness; we want it in our own souls, for communion with God, and for service, in season and out of season, doing all to the Lord, not with “eyeservice," or as "men-pleasers;" we want it for trial, for days of sorrow, that we may not "despise" His chastening, think lightly of it, or "faint," sink under it when we are rebuked of Him; we want it for conflict with the powers of darkness, and if we die we want it for dying. We want it that we may say, like Paul, "I am ready to be offered." It is in the gloomy shade the vessel should give her light. He is with me.-What clouds are scattered by this single thought-mountains of anguish roll away from the heart!

Some one is saying, “It is all new to me; I have no light, no power." Yes; but by your accepting Christ, believing in Him, you become a lamp yourself; in other words, putting yourself, under the rich droppings of the blood of Christ, all your sins are purged away, and you-"Complete in Him, accepted in the Beloved."

X.

The Flying Roll.

THE FLYING ROLL.

"JERUSALEM hath sinned,
Judgment is on her now,
No sceptre in her hand,
No crown upon her brow;
Alone she sits--alone,
Her ancient glory gone."

Tenth Part.

THE FLYING ROLL.

"Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and
behold a flying roll.”—ZECH. v. I.

HE prophet Ezekiel had the vision of a roll,

TH

'Behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; and he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe." The vision which Zechariah had was that of a flying roll; its dimensions being singularly those of the Tabernacle, reminding us that if judgment begin at the house of God, "where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?"

The vision is one of judgment. The interpreting angel said, “This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth," or as the word is, "land." What sin had wrought the prophet Jeremiah sorrowfully tells. What an elegy is chapter iv. of his Lamentations. "How is the gold

become dim! how is the most fine gold changed!

They [the opulent and great] that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills. For the punishment . . . is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom. . . . Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire; their visage is blacker than a coal;" and so altered are they, "they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick. They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger. . . The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people." The people's inheritance is turned to strangers, their houses to aliens. They are orphans and fatherless, their mothers are as widows. They have drunken their water for money; their wood is sold unto them. Their necks are under persecution: they labour, and have no rest. "The Lord hath accomplished His fury; He hath poured out His fierce anger. . . . The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem."