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love, the Bridegroom returning to the Bride, whom He purchased with his own blood,-the seeing Jesus, as He is, is not this, and should it not be, a well-spring of holy joy in the hearts of His people?-But you will say, "it is not His coming, that I fear, but my fitness for His coming; will He own me when He comes? He shall come in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:-Am not I one of these?" Oh! my brother, this is indeed a different question I am supposing you to be a child of God, one of Christ's elect, of whom it is triumphantly said, "who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?" But if you have no good evidence that you are one of this blessed number, I would use this solemn subject as a close argument with you, to put aside your slothfulness and false humility and that unbelief by which you so dishonour God, and search and try your ways, and pray for a right understanding,-that if you are not a child of God, but only a self-deceiver, you may be made to see it plainly, and may be converted and live; and that if you are a child of God, that the Lord may quicken you to give all diligence to make your calling and election sure, that He may be pleased to give you the spirit of adoption, that He may seal you with the Holy Spirit of adoption, that the Holy Spirit may bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God; that you may know that you are a son of God, and have full assurance that you are a pardoned sinner, and will be kept by the power of God unto the inheritance reserved for you.-These are not times for persons to remain in a doubtful state, unstable in all their ways, for "if ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established." But I say again, I speak to all the children of God, take home to your bosom the sweet command of the Saviour, and "lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.'

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2d. Again look for your Redeemer's coming with patience, as it is written in 2 Thess. iii. 3. "The Lord is faithful who shall establish you and keep you from evil; and we have

confidence in the Lord touching you, that ye both do and will do the things we command you, and the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ." We know not, my Brethren, what furnace of affliction the Lord may have provided for his people, that tribulation may work patience in them; nor are we to anticipate evils, but we are to be prepared for them; and in the midst of them to be still waiting patiently for the Redeemer who shall avenge His own elect from all their enemies, spiritual and temporal. Let patience have her perfect work, and cast not away your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come, will come, and will not tarry. "For the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces, and the rebuke of his people shall He take away from off all the earth, for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day ; Lo this is our God; we have waited for him and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."

3d. But that which is most frequently and earnestly pressed upon us by our Lord and his servants is, to be looking for Him with watchfulness, watchfulness in the largest sense of the word. "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when he will return from the wedding, that when he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. Be ye therefore ready, for the son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not," and so, repeatedly in St. Matthew; "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh," and in St. Mark, "what I say unto you, I say unto all, watch,”—and in the Epistle to the Thessalonians; "Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. But ye brethren are not in darkness that that day should overtake

you as a thief. Ye are all (i. e. believers) the children of light, and the children of the day;-therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober." Consider with yourselves, my Brethren, what a blessed argument and motive this is for watchfulness;-the approaching judgments and trials and tribulation, and the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we should be slumbering in self-indulgence and worldliness, and false security, what trouble and perplexity shall we bring upon ourselves, and what dishonour upon that Saviour who ought to be glorified in us. O what a shame will it be to us, if when the cry is made, “Behold the bridegroom cometh," our wedding garment is polluted with the filth and dust of the world. It is to this then I would affectionately beseech you, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, I would beseech you, as elect, holy and beloved by Him, as His glory and crown of rejoicing, when he shall come to be glorified in you his saints, that you watch unto holiness, and watch against sin. "Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace without spot and blameless and account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation." "For though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, and every one that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure," &c. "Behold," says our Lord, "I come as a thief in the night, blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.” My brethren, set your hearts stedfastly to maintain a spirit of holy indifference and deadness to all mere worldly things: "Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved," think what manner of persons ye ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. "For there is laid up for you a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge shall give you at that day, and not to you only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

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"For your conversation is in heaven, from whence also you are looking for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ;" and "when Christ, who is our life, shall appear (you perceive how all points to this, the Redeemer's second appearing) then shall ye also appear with Him in glory."-And now, brethren, seek for the Spirit of God to write this which follows on your hearts; "Therefore," because you shall thus appear with him in glory, "mortify your members which are upon the earth;" take up your cross, deny yourselves daily and follow Christ, "living soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."

I put it to you then, is this the desire of your hearts, that you may be prepared for the perilous times,-the days of blasphemy, and rebuke, and tribulation, and keeping your garments pure, may be in the constant exercise of faith, looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? If it is so, dear brethren, let us, drawn in closer communion with each other, approach the table of the Lord, supplicating for ourselves, and our country, and the Church of Christ, that we may be counted worthy to escape all those things which shall come to pass, and stand before the son of man. And may the Lord make us to increase and abound in love towards one another, and towards all men, to the end he may establish our hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Amen.

SERMON II.

"And as it was, in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also, as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded: But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed." Luke xvii. 26-30.

Upon this, the first Sunday of Advent, we have already been engaged in considering, as we are enjoined by our Church to do, the subject of the second coming of our Lord, and as this morning I endeavoured more especially to stir up those who are indeed the people of God to a more holy and patient and joyful looking for Him, inasmuch as He will appear to them a second time without sin unto salvation, so now it is my desire to make a more general and practical improvement of the whole subject; and more particularly to speak of this event as it will affect the professing Church at large, and a careless and ungodly world, if peradventure God should give to any such here present, grace to consider of their ways, and to repent, and so escape from the judgment to come.

May that same Jesus, who sent his messenger to prepare his way before Him, enable me now, as his minister and

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