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conscious of the folly and shame and wretchedness of some former? Can you not judge of this from that? Can you not even by this experience see that it is possible that God's word may come true, when it tells you that His wrath is revealed from heaven Ro. 1. 18. against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men?

2. We spoke too of counsel. Counsel ever grows out of warning, and ever passes on into comfort. Break off thy sins by righteousness, that is at once Dan. 4. 27. counsel. Here counsel takes a very practical form. It says, See that you get the victory over the beast (which is the world) and over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name. It says, Be not afraid of a man that shall die. It Is. 51. 12. says, Put not your trust in a man that shall die. It says, Live a life above this life; a life all your own; a life which shall continue when all else is stripped off you; a life independent of time, independent of circumstance, independent of human opinion and of mortal chance and change, because it is already hidden with Christ in God, and when Col. 3.3, 4. Christ shall appear, then and then only shall appear, shall be revealed, with Him. Be a man of God; be a servant of Christ; have no mark on your brow but the mark placed there at your baptism in token that you would not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified. O where is that mark now? Ask yourselves, every one of you!

3. And some need to-night comfort even more than counsel. Your way is long and dark, thorny

and steep, disconsolate and lonely. You hear on 2 Pet. 3. 4. every side the question of the scoffer, Where is the Joh. 6. 30. promise of His coming? What sign showest Thou? Faith fails too often, and then your life is dreary indeed: dark in the present, and dark also in the prospect. What does this night's text say to you? Heb.10.37. Does it not say, Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry? Does it not Lu. 21. 28. say, Look up, and lift up your heads, for your re

demption draweth nigh? I saw as it were a sea

of glass mingled with fire: and I saw them that had Rev. 2. 3. gotten the victory, those who for His name's sake had laboured on earth and suffered and not fainted,

stand on the margin of that sea, having the harps of God; and I heard them sing the song of redemption and the song of the Lamb; yea, I heard them sing with one voice the triumphant hymn of ch. 1. 5, 6. the justified and the glorified, Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and Ilis Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever!

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY,

February 2, 1862.

LECTURE XXIX.

REVELATION XVI. I-14.

AND I heard a great voice saying to the seven angels, I Go your way, pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God into the earth. And the first went forth, and poured out his 2 bowl into the earth: and there became an evil and painful sore upon the men who had the mark of the wild beast and who worshipped his image.

AND the second poured out his bowl into the sea: and 3 there became blood as of a dead man; and every soul of life died, the things that were in the sea.

AND the third poured out his bowl into the rivers 4 and into the springs of the waters: and there became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying, Just art Thou, 5 O Holy One who art and who wast, because Thou didst judge these things; because blood of saints and of prophets did 6 they pour out, and blood didst Thou give them to drink: they are worthy. And I heard the altar saying, Yea, Lord 7 God the Almighty; true and just are Thy judgments.

AND the fourth poured out his bowl upon the sun; and 8 it was given to it to scorch mankind in (with) fire. And 9 mankind were scorched [with] a great heat; and mankind blasphemed the name of God who hath the authority over these plagues, and they repented not to give Him glory.

10

AND the fifth poured out his bowl upon the throne of the wild beast: and his kingdom became darkened; and II they gnawed their tongues out of (from) the pain, and blasphemed the God of the heaven out of (from) their pains and out of from) their sores, and repented not out of their works.

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AND the sixth poured out his bowl upon the great river, the Euphrates; and its water was dried, that the way of the kings who are from the rising of the sun might be pre13 pared. And I saw out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the wild beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits, as it were frogs; 14 for they are spirits of demons, doing signs; which go forth upon the kings of the whole world, to collect them unto the war of that day, the great [day] of God the Almighty.

LECTURE XXIX.

REVELATION XVI. 15.

Behold, I come as a thief.

SEVEN angels have been seen to come forth out of the heavenly temple, and seven golden bowls have been given to them full of the wrath of God. The special object of the judgments now to commence is the second of the three enemies of Christ and His Church, the wild beast from the sea, which unites in Rev. 13. 1. itself the attributes of the worldly power in every form and phase. These judgments have been executed in a greater or less degree throughout all time. From the day when Pharaoh and the Egyptians in their hot pursuit of the escaping Israel were overwhelmed in the waters of the Red Sea, down to the latest overthrow which history has recorded of earthly power and ambition whether personal or national, at the very moment (it may be) of its

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