that Europe had learned enough of war up to 1814 to shrink from it for ever. Had these men recol

lected that as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be when the Son of man cometh, they would have paused before they prophesied so badly. What better testimony can we have to what man is capable of, than that the very people who shed torrents of blood, and committed the awful deeds of 1793, did things, if possible, more awful in 1848? And at this present moment all Europe is one vast volcano, waiting for the match to be applied to explode into a thousand fragments. What is now taking place upon the Danube, whether it be the fanatic Sultan or the ambitious Czar that is to blame, is evidence that all Europe, notwithstanding the benevolent and dutiful attempts of statesmen to avert it, is plunging more and more into one vast and devastating war. We are just upon the verge of the utter waning of the Crescent. And while that Crescent wanes, the old Eastern churches that are now under the Mahometan power are becoming more enlightened, more desirous of God's Word, more willing to listen to faithful preaching by the missionaries of the Cross; and a people, enlightened by the Bible, are ready to take the place of a people degraded by the Koran, preparatory to that moment when the Jews, the kings from the sun-rising, shall move homeward to their own land, repossess it, and look for him in glory who will come and reveal himself as the Messiah, and they shall mourn every tribe apart, and be in

bitterness as one is in bitterness for his own firstborn.

Notwithstanding all prophecies of peace, the nations are at this moment as ready for war as ever. This seems very strange; it only shows that men are not yet tired of war, and that until the Prince of Peace shall sway his sceptre over a transformed world, there may be "Peace, peace"-the calm, the quiet-but not the permanent peace that keeps the heart and mind continually.

In the days of Noah, not only was the earth filled with violence, so that we may expect the same violence to be exhibited again; but out of all that vast population there were only eight persons that obeyed God's word, that worshipped the true God, and honoured him. Far be it from me to pronounce where to pray is duty; but is it not fact, at this moment, that if you take Christendom at large, you cannot say that the majority are Christians; you cannot say that the majority of the professing Church are true, spiritually-minded Christians? It is still true that "broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat;" and "narrow is the way that leadeth to life, and few there be that find it." As "it was in the days of Noah"-that the overwhelming majority were opposed to the truth, and enamoured of a lie so previous to Christ's second advent in the bursting cloud that reveals the lightning in its splendour, and ushers in the Lord of glory, the

great multitude will be without God, and without Christ, and without hope in the world.

Another feature of the men in the days of Noah was their intense worldliness. They were eating, drinking, marrying wives, and giving in marriage. Now there was no sin in any of these. It was not sinful, but dutiful to eat and drink, if they did so in moderation; it was lawful to marry then, as it is lawful and dutiful to marry now, ever remembering the grand modifying law that gives it all its consistency and its beauty: "Let them that marry be as though they married not; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that use the world as not abusing it, knowing that the fashion of it speedily passeth away." What was the sin of the antediluvians in eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage? It was the excessive love of the lawful which corrupted them, as truly as their constant indulgence in the sinful. Never forget the danger we are in in loving to excess what is lawful, as well as in practising that which is forbidden; and there is probably more peril in the excessive love of the lawful than there is in the forbidden practice of the sinful. More men lose their souls by being absorbed in practices that are in themselves unexceptionable, than in practices that are positively sinful and forbidden. The world then was their temple; indulgence of the appetites was their delight; the gratification of the flesh was their enjoyment. They were the slaves of appetite,

the servants of the world. This world was their all; they made the most of it-"Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." But on the supposition that there is a world beyond it, where the deeds of the present have their echo in the retributions of the future, their conduct was disobedient in the extreme. Now it will be so at the end of this dispensation. Men will eat and drink, and marry and give in marriage, and they will think nothing of the future. While it is their privilege and their duty to trade, they will not simply be in the world-where God has placed them-but they will be of the world, where Christians ought not to be. And the reason of this was, that they were in those days atheists, or they lived without God. Now an atheist we shrink from in horror, and very justly. I cannot conceive a rational being with one ounce of common sense to come to the conclusion that there is not a God who made and governs this present world. The thing seems so absurd, that the man who could arrive at such a conclusion seems only fit to be the inmate of a lunatic asylum. The Psalmist's statement, "men that say, No God," does not mean that in David's days they were so foolish, as to conclude logically, "no God." If it were written, not in the Hebrew, but in Greek, it would have been in the optative mood. "The fool hath said in his heart," not "There is no God;" but, "I wish there was no God." He cannot avoid the logical conclusion that there is a God; but he wishes that he could

continue in his sins, and feel that there were no God to see him or to call him to account. The spirit of atheism may be where there is a perfect horror of the idea of an atheist. The man who explains every phenomenon without God, who sees nature's laws, but cannot see beyond them nature's Lawgiver, who accounts for every occurrence, prosperous or adverse, painful or pleasant, retribution or blessing, without God, may theoretically be no atheist, but practically he is so. He is an atheist who looks on everything, and thinks of everything practically on the hypothesis that there is no God. He enters on to-morrow's duties not feeling, "If the Lord will, or if the Lord will not;" he goes to to-morrow's business calculating upon all he can do, and all he will do, not recognising the possibly disturbing element, there is a God: such a man is not theoretically an atheist, but practically he is one. He is, as the Apostle describes him, "without God." For "atheist" does not mean a person opposed to God, but a person without God. An antitheist is one opposed to God. Voltaire was an antitheist, that is, one who deliberately and avowedly opposed and hated God; who swore in his blasphemy that he would dethrone him; whose letters closed with the execration that he would erase Christ's name from the earth. He was not an atheist, but an antitheist-one full of conscious enmity to God, opposed to him, and determined, at all hazards, and whatever might be the issue, to resist him. But many that profess to be Christians,