also the only place of safety from his attack? For it is obvious that Christianity does not create the evils and dangers from which it offers to deliver us, and that these must remain as facts should it be proved a fiction. So far, then, the infidel has gained nothing by the overthrow of our religion. "Except truth!" does he exclaim? Yet, I again repeat it, truth in its negative form only, as destroying supposed falsehoods, but not in its positive form as establishing something to rest upon.

Is there any other conceivable gain, then, which would accrue to the unbeliever by his supposed success? Does he wish, for example, to relieve oppressed souls of some great burden which crushes them? But what alleged truths or doctrine of Christianity, if blotted out to-morrow from the circle of belief, would ease a single soul, while it would unquestionably be an irreparable loss to millions? Would a God be more acceptable, and appear with greater moral beauty, who was different from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Would He be more attractive to our hearts if He did not forgive our sins fully and freely, or if forgiveness was not offered. through such Divine self-sacrifice? Would it be a relief to our moral being to be freed from the privilege or duty of supremely loving Jesus Christ? Would it lighten our hearts to be freed from the burden of having communion with Him in prayer? Would we have more security for light, life, strength, holiness, peace, or comfort, if there was no such Per

son revealed as the Spirit of God, who freely imparts His aid to all? Would it be glad tidings to hear that men were not to be born again, nor to repent, nor to deny themselves, nor to do God's will, but their own? What is there which a good man would gain by the destruction of the Christian religion!

I have one question more to suggest with reference to the duty of an unbeliever towards us as Christians, and it is this, Why should he disturb our faith, or, as he might term it, our superstition? If he retorts by asking why we should disturb his unbelief, our answer is ready—because we wish with our whole soul to share with him the blessings which God our common Father has for him as well as for us; because we truly lament the loss to our brother who refuses the eternal good which he may now enjoy with the whole family of God; because we love our God, and his God and Saviour, and desire our brother to know and to love them too; because it is so unjust, so selfish, so hateful, not to love and obey such a glorious Person as Jesus Christ, who knows us, loves us, and has died to gain our hearts! These are some of the reasons, rudely and roughly stated, why we desire, with all our heart, that every man should believe in Jesus Christ. But if any man, for any reason which may be beyond our understanding or sympathy, desires to destroy this faith in all that is most precious to us, then I ask, not in Christ's name,-for it is unnecessary to appeal to Him, but in the name of common sense and common philanthropy, why he should not only labour to do

this, but to do it without apparently any apprehension of the untold misery which he must occasion if he succeeds in his attempt? Do not tell us, with a boast, that "the truth must be spoken, come what may!" Be it so; but surely the kind of truth which must be spoken must ever regulate the manner in which it is spoken? Again, I bid you picture to yourselves a person entering a family whose members were rejoicing in the thought of a father's return, and announcing the intelligence of that father's death, with a smile of pity or a sneer of contempt at their ignorant happiness! Imagine such a one professing to be actuated by a mere love of truth! Oh! if the terrible duty has been laid upon any one with a human heart, of announcing to others intelligence which, if true, must leave a blank to them in the world that can never be filled up, what tender sympathy, what genuine sorrow becomes him who breaks the heavy tidings! And such ought to be the feelings of every man who, from whatever cause, feels called upon to announce that the Christian religion is false. If he must make known that terrible fact to believers in Jesus; if he must tell them that the supposed Source of all their life and joy has no existence, and that their faith in Him is vain, let this be done with the solemnity and the sorrow which a true brotherly sympathy would necessarily dictate. If the missionaries of Christianity are warranted in preaching their gospel with joy, the missionaries of an infidelity which professes only to destroy and not to build up,

should go forth on their dreadful vocation with the feeling of martyrs, and with no other notes of triumph than sounds of lamentation and woe! For if Christianity is false, we are "yet in our sins, all who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, and we are of all men most miserable!"

THOUGHTS UPON THE FINAL

JUDGMENT.

THER

HERE is no "fact of the future" more clearly revealed in Scripture, or more certainly believed in by the Christian Church, than that "God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead.”

No doubt this fact is denied or explained away by many modern critics. But it would be difficult to say what revealed fact, from Genesis to Revelation, is admitted by them, or what things may now be "most surely believed among us." We retain our first faith in the future judgment, and shall endeavour to look at it in a practical rather than in a speculative light.

There is, indeed, among mankind a general anticipation of a coming time when the mystery of God's providence will be cleared up, and His righteousness displayed in the final judgment to be then passed on the evil and on the good. What the human race are