his eyes "the great white throne" of the descending Judge, and Him that shall sit on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens shall flee away. Round about the throne, ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands "of the angelic host; and before the throne, all nations gathered together; the dead, small and great, standing before God." There shall be no blindness then; no mental darkness shall outlive that hour, for the Word of God has declared, "every eye shall see him.". Who can describe the misery of seeing Him for the first time as a Judge, whom we have never seen as a Saviour and a Friend? How peculiarly solemn is the thought, that this congregation, promiscuously brought together as it has been, during the present season, and containing, as all such assemblages must, the wheat and the tares, the righteous and the sinner, him that feareth God and him that feareth him not, shall, in all human probability, may we not say with all certainty, never re-assemble until that hour; that we, brethren, shall not meet again until our "eyes are

opened;" and until we awake to judgment, at the trump of the archangel.

My beloved brethren, may God, preserve us from the melancholy fate of that apostate prophet, who, "heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the Most High," and who is emphatically called, "the man whose eyes were opened:" and yet who, speaking of the "Star out of Jacob," and "the Holy One of Israel," left this his melancholy testimony, "I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh." Alas! the wretchedness of seeing the Saviour of sinners but only afar off, as the rich man beheld Abraham, and no hope, no power of approaching within the circle of his saving grace, of his redeemed and glorified people. Would you behold Him near, would you see Him on that day with holy joy, then humble yourselves before Him now, close with His offers of grace this day, for they may never be repeated. Pray to be even now cleansed by His blood, sanctified by His Spirit, prepared for His kingdom, and united to Him

in an everlasting covenant, never to be forgotten. Then shall this be the feeling of your awakened hearts on that great day, "Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, and He will save us; this is the Lord, we will rejoice and be glad in His salvation."*

* This lecture forms the close of the series preached in London, on the Wednesday mornings during Lent, 1838.

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LECTURE VII.

2 KINGS Vii. 18. (part.)

"It came to pass as the man of God had spoken."

WE resume the history of the prophet Elisha at a period of great public calamity, when the city of Samaria, in which he frequently resided, was visited by famine and the sword.

The Syrians, who had been taught by former failures, that it was vain to war against the prophet of the Lord, and therefore, as we learn from the 23d verse of the chapter preceding that from which the text is taken, "came no more into the land of Israel" for that purpose, now resolved upon besieging the capital itself; not knowing, probably, that the man they most dreaded was within its walls, and evidently not

fearing that any Divine interposition should be exerted in its behalf.

For a time, all things prospered with the enemies of the Lord, and of his people. Samaria was reduced to such extremity of famine, that as in after ages, in Jerusalem itself, the most loathsome food was greedily consumed; "an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth-part of a cab, about a half-a-pint of dove's dung," (which according to Shaw, the traveller, is a kind of peas or parched pulse eaten by the Jews,) was sold "for five pieces of silver;" while humanity is unwilling to record the horrible enormities, which necessity forced upon the guilty and perishing inhabitants.

In this extremity of suffering, all eyes were turned upon Elisha. The king himself, whose better judgment was overthrown for the moment by the horrors around him, and who in the intensity of his anguish had vowed the prophet's death, comes in person to revoke the sentence, and stands as a humble suppliant at Elisha's door.