earth. But the day in which Israel shall be delivered, will be a day of calamity and woe, "a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time." Half of them will, like Lot, have been carried captive, and the residue that will be left will be about to be devoured; for their enemies shall say, "Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance." But suddenly God shall interfere and will forgive and strengthen Israel, and cause them to triumph gloriously, and make them His nation in the earth whereby He shall subdue and govern all nations. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say; if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul: then the proud waters had gone over our soul. Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth." Such will be their song of triumph in that day; and it is then that the true Melchisedek will meet them as "the Priest of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth;" and bless them alike in body and in soul, and bring them under the ministration of abiding grace for ever.

But whilst the Melchisedek Priesthood of our Lord throws its chief and brightest light upon the future, we must not forget the wondrous blessing of being placed under its ministration now. We are pilgrims and strangers in the earth; weak and needy; surrounded by many enemies and by many dangers; needing, therefore, every moment, the constant ministration of grace; needing that the abiding relation of the Lord should be that of one who ministereth to us from time to time bread and wine (that which strengtheneth and that which cheereth), and so holding our souls in life. And such is the relation in which God, through Christ, stands to all His believing people. As we can say, speaking of ourselves naturally, that we in common with our fellow-men are sustained, from day to day, in the possession and exercise of all our natural faculties by the immediate power of God-"for in Him," (as men) "we live, and move, and have our" (natural) "being;" so, as believers, we stand in a new and spiritual relation to God, and are made the subjects of a perpetual and unfailing ministration of His power in respect of that which we are

as created anew in Christ. Every day He reneweth, in some degree or other, our spiritual strength: every day He ministereth something of comfort, or something that is for healthfulness to the new man. Not more sure His bestowal of the air that we breathe, or the light that we behold. And when our natural health and strength shall fail, and when mere nature shall be sustained no longer, then it is that we shall chiefly prove the power of this Melchisedek ministration, and find in the new and to us strange world of glory, that He is as able to minister a strength and a power of life suited to Heaven, as He is to minister that which is now needed in the circumstances of earth. Then it is that we shall, with understanding hearts, say, "of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things."

But to return to the history of Lot. We might have supposed that the sorrows and dangers through which he had passed, would have driven him back to the side of Abraham, with whom God so manifestly was. Yet nothing that experience teaches, unless the lesson be accompanied by the direct action of the grace of God, softens the obduracy of nature, even in a saint. Lot returned not to Abraham. Sodom, not Abraham's tent, became his dwelling-place. Before, he had "pitched his tent toward Sodom :" yet he had not entered it to dwell there. But now, Sodom had new attractions in his eyes, for he could enter it, not now any longer as an unknown wanderer, but as one illustrious in the sight of Sodom and its king, for to the kinsman of Lot, Sodom and its king owed their deliverance. The honour of Sodom was now added to the temptations of its fruitful plain; and Lot's heart again yielded to the lure. He became a dweller in Sodom, and with the people of Sodom he contracted affinity. His daughters (with the exception of two-and they became depraved) married in Sodom; and with Sodom they perished. In vain, when Lot was at last aroused by the close approach of judgment, he exhorted them and his sons-in-law to flee. They refused to listen they scoffed at the warning, and they were consumed. His wife, too, became a pillar of salt. The whole annals of the family of Lot are full of sin, death, and judgment. Moab and Ammon, the accursed enemies of Israel, sprang from him. His household seemed strangers to the fear of the Lord, and with the single exception of himself, sin seemed to rule over all within his dwelling.

We do indeed know that he was himself preserved in uprightness. We have the sure warrant of Scripture for saying that he was righteous, even in the midst of the men of Sodom, and "vexed his

righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds." The best thing, and in one sense the happiest thing that he gained for himself, was vexation of soul; for it marked him as belonging unto God. But all his vexation was in vain. None heard his admonitions: none yielded to his reproofs. He chose to dwell in the atmosphere of moral death his own soul was vexed: the hearts of his children hardened, and none were gained unto God. Spiritually, no condition could be more full of sadness. And as to outward prosperity, he had wished to gain for himself the rest of the fair and fruitful plain; he had sought the comforts and honours of Sodom. For this he had left the side of Abraham. For this he had abandoned the present guidance of his God, but all that he had gained-all that he had coveted was wrested from his grasp, and what he finally secured for himself was a desolate cave in a mountain, where his pilgrimage, as far as it is traced in Scripture, ends-ends in foul dishonour and sin. And yet Lot belonged unto God. But God permitted him to wander, that he might be taught, and that we might be taught that it is a bitter and an evil thing to quit the separate pilgrim place, and to despise that present guidance of God and of His Truth by which alone our steps can be guided into ways of honour and of peace.

The Second Advent of our Lord not secret but in manifested glory.

WILL the Second Advent of our Lord and Saviour for which we wait, be secret, or in manifested glory? Will it terminate the age of human evil, or will evil still reign and triumph after it? Until recently there has been in the true Church of God a happy unanimity in answering these questions. In the midst of all the disagreements which have so grievously marred, and to a great extent, nullified the testimonies of Christ's people, they have not until recently, on this point, differed. They have all with one voice affirmed that when our great High Priest returns "without sin, unto salvation," He will return in manifested glory. "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen." "He shall come in His own glory and in His Father's, and of the holy angels." Until recently none have doubted that these and like texts describe the approaching Advent of our Lord—that Advent for which all His people are commanded to watch. It is, no doubt, possible that we may all have been deceived. We are not like the Apostles, inspired and infallible. Apart from the Apostles, the

concurrent assent of all the saints in earth has no authoritative value. We have no test of Truth except the Scripture. Nevertheless, a doctrine so truly new as the secret coming of the Lord, and the secret removal of His saints, must by its very novelty, awake suspicion, and should therefore be jealously tested by the Scriptures of Truth. With respect to this, and all other doctrines proposed to our acceptance, we appeal "to the law and to the testimony." Every thing that agreeth not therewith is not of light, but of darkness.

Let us refer then, first, to the Epistles. The fourth chapter of the first of Thessalonians reveals the instrumentality by which the saints who sleep are to be raised, and the living saints changed. "The

Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: afterward (ETEIтα) we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Can we, after reading these words, affirm that the coming of the Lord will be secret? Do such expressions as "shout," "voice of the archangel," and "trump of God," imply secrecy? What expressions could be chosen to denote universality of manifestation if these do not? Nor is the sphere of this manifestation to be above the heavens. There, indeed, it might be hidden from mortal view. But heavenly places (Tа eπоvрavia) are not to be the scene of this manifestation. It is not said that the Lord will descend from that place of glory which He now occupieth, "high above all heavens," and that He will descend into lower heavens and there receive His saints above the skies. On the contrary, it is said that He shall descend from heaven into "the air," and "the air is not above but below the firmament."* The air is the atmosphere that surrounds the earth in close contiguity thereunto, and is a part of this sublunary creation-contrasted, therefore, with the firmament and all that is above the firmament. It is "in the air" that the saints are to meet their Lord. Nor will they meet Him merely. The word translated "meet," means to meet† and to come with the person whom we meet. We are to meet Him in that day of His glory in order that we may accompany Him to the place to which He is going. It will be the day of visitation to Israel and to the earth. He will proceed from the air to the earth: and His feet shall stand on it. "His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives," Zech. xiv. He will stand there as the Refiner indeed and Purifier of Israel, but also as their Deliverer. He will come as the Destroyer of His and their enemies who will at that moment be found under Antichrist, gathered in the valley of Jehoshaphat, there to be trodden in the wine-press of wrath.

* Thus the fowl are called in Genesis "the fowl of the air," and it is said that they "fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."-Gen. i. 20.

+ Els amavτnow. See its use in Acts xxviii. 15, where the brethren went to meet Paul at Appii Forum as he was proceeding towards Rome, accompanied him thence to Rome. "This expression occurs twice in the New Testament, and each time implies meeting one who was approaching-not merely meeting with a person."-ALFORD.