plead with the importunity of faith that great may be the company of the preachers," great the blessing vouchsafed, until the gospel having been proclaimed as "a witness. to all nations," the end shall come. Your own kindred and friends call for your supplication; there may be those dear to you who are yet afar from God, they heed not your reproof, they reject your urgent pleas. Turn from entreaty to them, to entreaty to God: they cannot keep you from a throne of grace; present them before Him who heareth prayer. How knowest thou but that thou mayest prevail? Thy supplication may bring down the blessing, and a soul be won, as Israel gained his brother's favour, on the unfrequented field of wrestling prayer. Thine own soul demands thy prayer. "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way;" oh draw near and plead with holy boldness, stand before the LORD until the blessing descend, until you are "strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man," and enabled to press forward for the prize. Finally, "holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus;" in your hours of joy, in your seasons of sadness, in your weakness and in your strength, in your "labour

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of love" and in your "patience of hope," in your pleadings for mercy consider Him. He stands yet before His Father. Abraham asked and stayed from asking. Jesus saith, "Father I will," and it is done. Abraham needed mercy himself, while yet he pleaded for others. Jesus, "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners," is the propitiation for our sins. "The LORD left communing with Abraham, and Abraham returned unto his place," but "this man because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood, wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them." Oh consider, trust, rejoice in, Him. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but His word shall not pass away; in the wreck of worlds, when the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up, His children shall have a place of refuge. "I go," He said, "to prepare a place for you." "Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am." Rest then on His advocacy, rely on His intercession, He will never leave you, He will finish and perfect the purposes of His love, He will house you safe in the mansions of His Father's house, -you shall dwell in the presence of God and the Lamb for ever.

XIV.

THE DESPISED WARNING.

GENESIS, chap. xix. verse 14.

"And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons-in-law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law."

THE Voice of intercession has ceased; the LORD hath "left communing with Abraham," and “Abraham hath returned to his place.' Those words of mercy still sound in his ear— "I will not destroy it for ten's sake." Hope and fear contend for mastery as he ponders what the result may be. "Shall even ten be lacking; may not ten, at least, be found to stand in the gap, in this day of the LORD's anger?"... Alas! too soon shall it be found that such an expectation, if entertained, was fallacious. "And there came two angels to Sodom at even." Pressed by Lot to partake of his hospitality, they enter into his house, but not unobserved by the inhabitants of the

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city. And now did the people of Sodom shut against themselves the last, the only door of mercy. They approached with insult the residence of Lot; enraged at his resistance to their demands, they are about to add violence to reproaches, when his guests, the ministers of God's vengeance, put forth their hand and draw within the house their kind, but timid and temporizing entertainer; and smote the assailants with blindness, or deception of sight, so that in vain they seek the entrance. Then did the angels proceed to announce to Lot the destruction that was at hand: "Hast thou here any besides? Sons-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place." Fain is he to embrace the kind permission, and to warn those so dear to him. He seeks his relatives, he addresses them with the words of warning," Up, get you out of this place, for the LORD will destroy this city." Alas! he met with no success; "he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law." Brethren, as though that eventful evening were now lengthening its shadows,-let us draw near and behold the city; let us listen to the warning addressed to the relatives of Lot; let us mark, finally, the result.

I. Let Us Draw Near and Behold the City. "And there came two angels to Sodom at even." How momentous a season! the last evening of long-suffering mercy that ushered in the day of wrath! The last evening! It must come to all; sickness may or may not precede the change; the approach of that last evening may, or may not, be previously announced; death with his still cold touch may be his own harbinger; or the voice of warning may be sounded; but come it will, the hour when the harvest will be past, the summer ended, the stewardship closed. Momentous season! the very brink of that unseen, yet real and changeless future; but more momentous still the days, and months, and years, that have gone before; the precious seed-time of which that last evening was but a part,-an atom from the whole ;--what will the record then be to us,—wasted or improved,-lived unto God, or perverted to the losing of the soul?...

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How abounding their iniquity! Open and gross sin was there; they had long been heaping up wrath;" "sinners before the LORD exceedingly." They stand out from others in daring impiety; but yet in declaring that impiety, what doth the LORD unfold as