of gold (and I am told that only the other day a million arrived in this great capital) no longer makes the Apocalyptic statement a poetical extravagance, but the literal possibility of the day: "And the streets of the city were pure gold." And whilst there shall be this travelling to and fro, it is added, "Knowledge shall be increased." In all directions this is taking place. Everybody is seen prying into every department of nature, art, antiquities, history, and science. An insatiable curiosity has seized every mind-a thirst for information has come upon every rank. Long-buried secrets are stepping forth from their hiding-places, at the bidding of men who refuse to be disappointed. Nineveh has arisen from the dead, to tell mankind what the Bible has been telling ceaselessly, "Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." The Polar realms are explored; the secrets of the iceberg and the tenantry of the frozen zone are brought to light; and the attempt of a thousand years-in pursuit of which the gallant Franklin and countless brave seamen have perished-the North-west Passage, has at length been achieved; and the North Pole will probably be as clearly revealed in a few years as the Equator is now. Medical science has attained wondrous progress since Jesus, who consecrated it by his example, lived and healed, and suffered and died. Those formidable epidemics, the offspring of our sin as much as the judgment of God, are more thoroughly understood; and I do not see why

the pestilence which we call typhus, or the other pestilence we call fever, or the other we call cholera, or the last and worst endemic, rather than epidemic, we call consumption, may not, by God's blessing, be as much mitigated as a recent pestilence, more destructive than any of them, known by the name of small-pox. We see in all these things predicted progress in knowledge. And that wonderful anesthetic agent, chloroform, which is a very recent discovery, has mitigated the primal curse pronounced on one half the human family, and rendered the terrible operation of the surgeon's knife scarcely perceptible to the subject of it.

During the last days, it is stated, as another fact and feature, that "the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached among all nations for a witness.' Now, is not this a distinguishing sign of the age? China, the impregnable fortress of inveterate superstition, has lifted up its everlasting gates, and partly without and partly with our teaching, the truths of the King of Glory have entered, and the glorious sound of the Gospel may be now heard reverberating in the streets of Pekin; and our country, true to its responsibility, is pouring Bibles and missionaries into it. The proposal of the excellent Mr. James, of Birmingham, to send a million Chinese Testaments into China, has been taken up, and more than the expense is now provided. In all probability, a half million of Old Testaments will be added. The tribes that cluster around the North Pole, whose home is the region

of perpetual snow, have been sought out for so many years apparently to gratify curiosity, but really to complete the fulfilment of the prophecy: "This gospel shall be preached as a witness among all nations." The Moslem, the Hindoo, and the Chinaman, are emerging into the everlasting light. In every tongue on earth the Gospel has its music and its glad echo. In every latitude and longitude the cross is revealed, obstructing walls are falling; and where Christianity may not be accepted as a remedy, it is everywhere heard as a witness, and is, therefore, according to the words of our Lord, a precursor of the end.

Another symptom of the close of this age is now patent, the great boasting of the Romish Babylon. Never did the Church of Rome boast louder than she does now. She saith in her heart, "I sit a queen, and am no widow." This is dotage, not power. Her last day shall be her proudest, her dying resistance will be the greatest. She will go down, as sure as there is truth in prophecy; but like a ship at sea, every sail set, and her prophecies of supremacy lifted up loudest and most impudent to the end. She has crushed every attempt within to rectify her errors and reform her corruptions; she has persecuted with the sword and fagot every exertion from without to awaken her to a sense of apostasy; her pride has grown with her years; her pretensions are, in the year 1854, louder than in the palmy days of Hildebrand himself. But her imperial splendour shall be her funeral pall; her

present glory shall soon only light her to her

grave.

At this very period, immediately before the destruction of the Crescent in the East and of the Tiara in the West, we read in Old and New Testament prophecy, there will be a general war over the length and breadth of Europe; the unclean spirits preparing the kings of the earth for the great battle, or rather war, as the Scripture calls it, of God Almighty. Many and terrible are the signs of the fulfilment. The revolutionary fires that are smouldering under every throne will one day burst out; and every capital in Europe shall blaze, every village become a camp, and every country a battle-field. Assembled kings shall debate their very existence in the high places of the earth, and kingdom dash against kingdom, like stars broken loose from their orbits; and rulers fall from their high places, like leaves or unripe fruit from the fig-tree, when shaken by fierce winds. Every acre of Europe is covered at this hour with strange and ominous shadows, which coming events cast before. Auguries of looming evils have found access to cabinets and councils; and statesmen at their wits' end look pale and perplexed, while their hearts tremble for fear of the things that are coming on the earth. 1848 was a great sea-wave, rising and reaching far up the shores of Europe, and then receding, but only to gather fresh volume, and to come up again augmented in mass, and with accumulated speed, to burst over the lowliest hearth

stone and the loftiest roof-tree, convulsing all things, wasting many, yet sweeping away the corrupting drift-weed of centuries, and destined, we believe, in the purposes of God, to baptize rather than overwhelm and bury the earth.

Another remarkable sign of the times, and, in its place, significant of our impression of the nearness of the end of the age, is the intensity that is concentrated in almost every sphere and department of life. The object may be great, or the pursuit may be in itself worthless; but everywhere you perceive that energy, and vigour, and great force are in it. Let it be the manufacture of a pin, or the enlightenment of a soul, let it be the service of a master behind the counter, or of our gracious Queen in the cabinet,-there is condensed in it evident, and palpable, and untiring energy. For evil or for good, the age of apathy is gone. Men are in earnest in all they do; they are doing what they undertake with all their might. All seem to feel as if the time for their mission were preternaturally short, and the force they have extremely inadequate, and the night of time, or the night of death, too near to allow of respite from their toils, or a relaxation of their energies.

What is Tractarianism but old High Churchism in earnest? Ignorant of vital and evangelical truth, it is occupied about robes, and candles, and genuflexions, and crosses, and phylacteries. Better however earnest anything than dead everything.