shut out all sound of salvation. Hear, then, to-day. "To dress the soul for a funeral," says Jeremy Taylor, "is not a work to be despatched at one meeting." In the midst of the commɔn business of life, the wise man will pause, and make his peace with God, and refuse to engage in any thing else till this be done. So did Montcalm, at Quebec, saying,

"I'll neither give orders, nor interfere any further. I have business to attend to of greater moment than your ruined garrison and this wretched country. My time is short: I shall pass this night with God, and prepare myself for death."

Do we not all, in this very hour, recall a death-bed scene in which some loved one has passed away? And, as we bring to mind the solemn reflections of that hour, are we not ready to hear and to heed the voice with which a dying wife once addressed him who stood sobbing by her side :

"My dear husband, LIVE for one thing, and only one thing; just one thing, the glory of God, the glory of God!"

III.

THE DARK DAYS.

"Never have I known

That the base perish: such the gods protect,
Delighting from the realms of death to snatch
The crafty and the guileful; but the just
And generous they in ruin always sink.

How for these things shall we account, or how
Approve them?”

So sang the Greek poet.1

And in one of the

read, "For I was

sweet songs of Israel we envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death; but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. . . Is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they

1 Sophocles: Philoctetes.

increase in riches. Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. . . . When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end."

We cannot justify the ways of God to men till we go into the sanctuary, and there, under the divine light and guidance, seek to solve the problems that perplex us. We ourselves have often noticed the apparent prosperity of men of marked wickedness; and it has not been always clear to us that their death has been in obedience to the divine behest, or that, in dying, they have had any peculiar sense of the folly of their lives, with compunctions of conscience, and decided apprehensions of spiritual evil beyond the grave. We have said, "There are no bands in their death." When, however, we bring this matter to the test of the sanctuary, we understand better the divine word and providence. Wicked men are removed from the world in obedience to a divine law of moral progress in this universe; and though the most die heedlessly, as they live, it is sometimes truė,

that, in the dying-hour, the bands of the wicked gather about them, and their future life is overhung with gloom. Not unfrequently the valley of death appears very dark; and, alarmed by a sense of sin and vague terror, they confess the vanity of all merely earthly pursuits and pleasures. It is suitable, therefore, to enter into the sanctuary, and seek to know the end of the ungodly. And we shall need no very laborious studies to discover, with the writer of the Hebrew song, that it is a mistake to say of wicked men, that there are no bands in their death. Their dying-days are days of darkness.

I will, at first, ask how often you have thought of the relief which this world experiences when hardened sinners are taken away? It must be a galling reflection to a dying man to think, that, after all his life-work, the most intelligent and the best men are glad to be rid of him, or, at the least, feel that he is no loss, that moral goodness will triumph the sooner for his departure. It is, however, a consoling thought to those who have the best interests of

mankind at heart, that Death serves a very important part in removing from the world those who hinder the advancement of God's kingdom. If the moral universe is to go forward, some way must be found, not only for advancing holy souls to their final reward, but also for transplanting the wicked to their own place. Death is, therefore, the messenger of God, bearing his sons heavenward, and also ridding this world of the most desperately depraved characters in it.

Before the flood, it seemed as if wickedness was well-nigh immortal; and this world became a sort of hell, quenched only by opening the windows of heaven, and breaking up the deep. Surpassing skill and power and hardihood in sinning increased with every year of their lengthened lives. If, also, we turn the other way, and look forward to the millennial state, we are apt to think, from the hints of Scripture, that life will be much longer then than now. This, in itself, will be a certain preparation for the falling-away to come thereafter; when longlived depravity will stalk abroad, with guilt