and mercy. All men are brothers, and all claim kindred to a common Father. "The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our God, and of His Christ." Hark, how the myriad hymns of praise unite, while all the myriad minstrels summer in the sunshine of the gospel of salvation!" Listen to the swelling tide of song, as fresh anthems of thanksgiving rise like choral incense to the throne of God; and as you catch the cadence of the rolling numbers, launch forth your voice upon the surging ocean of extatic praise! Hallelujah! for Christ has got the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts or the earth for His possessions. Hallelujah! for millennial days have dawned upon us, and Satan is enchained within his dark domain. Hallelujah! for the cross has triumphed over death and hell, and the Prince of Peace hath gotten Him the victory. Hallelujah! for slavery and sin are dragged, disarmed and vanquished, at the chariot-wheels of the crucified Nazarene. Hallelujah! for the throne is decked with the spoils of gospe victories, and all nations shall call the Saviour blessed. "Halle lujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!"

I cannot part from you this afternoon without adding a word of earnest exhortation, or at least of making an attempt to stimulate the aspirations of those who are neither anxious nor prepared for this bright morrow. I must let my last words be words of encouragement to the timorous, and of entreaty to the obdurate. There may be some who are bewailing sin, but who are deterred by the rehearsal of the long catalogue of their crimes from coming now to Christ. O, fling away despondency! There is no passage in God's holy book which forbids any contrite prodigal to come to the cross. No, but the invitations to lay hold on eternal life, the overtures to the wanderer to return, and the promises to the suppliant of a free salvation, stream down from every page like floods of milk and honey. O, take these invitations, then! Do you suppose the spirit and the bride are saying "come," just to bring you to the door and then to dash it in your face? Away with such a foul aspersion on the love of Christ! I tell you the fountain is still open, the invitation is still free, and in the name of him whose streaming veins supply that fountain with its crimson tide, I call upon each fallen child of sin to come. Come, ye weary and ye heavy laden, and have your chains unclasped, and leap unfettered in the noon-day sun. Come, ye sick and leprous, and baptize your fainting souls beneath this flood, and "be strong in the Lord and the power of His might." Come, ye down-trodden and ye abject sons or want, and be enriched with the dower and the heritage of the

sons of God. Come, ye famished and ye hungry pilgrims, and feed upon the bread that cometh down from Heaven. Come, ye panting and ye thirsty souls, parched with the feverish heats of earth and hell, and take the water of life freely. Come to the open door, come to the open fountain, come to the open arms. Ye helpless gropers in the gloom of death and of despair, avert your downcast eyes from things bencath your feet, and fix them upwards on the beaming glory where the seraphs dip their soaring wings, and where the minstrels praise and sing. Ye tearful mourners at the funeral urn of hope, break off your doleful sighs, and clothe yourselves in airy garments, whilst you shout hosannas to the Lamb that was slain, for blazing skies are opening with their pearly thrones, and heavenly fingers beckon you to come, and angel voices tell you that life and immortality are brought to light. O, talk no more of death! for "death is swallowed up in victory." Victory! for the sacrifice has been offered, the pardon ratified, and the salvation sealed. Victory! for the cross has triumphed over death and hell, and Christ the victim is now Christ the victor. Victory! for our Immanuel has led captivity captive, and received gifts for men. Victory! It is the language of a choral heaven, and the responsive echo of a waiting church. Victory! It rolls along the archives of the skies, and is caught up by the battling armies of the living God on earth. Victory! It has been the certain watchword of the faithful in all time-and will be the exultant cry of the redecined through all eternity. Victory! It is the shout of angels from on high when a suppliant rebel seeks the closet with a broken and a contrite heart. Victory! It is the anthem of that suppliant when he rises with that broken heart bound up, and with the peace that passeth understanding kissing his soul to rest. Victory! It is the motto on the radiant banner which the waiting angels wave over the bed of pain and death, when the spirit of the expiring saint is gasping to be free; and it shall be your cry too, my poor desponding brother, if you will but lay aside your shivering doubts, and come to Jesus and his cross. You may be groping in gloom, and stumbling in thick and gathering darkness, but take hold of the rod and the staff of your Great Elder Brother, lean all your weight upon it. Plod sturdily up the steep and rugged hill; you shall, ere long, gain the summit. Do you not even now already feel the early morning breezes fanning upon your brow? The mountain-top is gained, and as you kneel beneath the grey and misty sky you brush the dewdrop from the opening heather-bell. The haze grows less and less inense, and gently curls away over the vallies, as the glow

ing east smiles forth the promise of a rising sun! And now the orient orb unveils its beaming radiance, and floods the widespread prospect with effulgent light; and in that blissful effluence from the Godhead's throne you look back upon the discipline through which you have been led, while night was heavy on your soul, and in each footprint there are signs of mercy; for, beside the precipice, and jagged, overhanging rock there are other footprints than your own-you have not walked alone-those footsteps have gone nearer to the edge than yours, and there's not a single peril amidst which you've passed, but that companion has attended you, and even now, that you have been conducted out of darkness into all this marvellous light, you can see to read your Saviour's promise—“ When thou passest through the fire it shall not consume thee, and through the water it shall not overflow thee; and lo! I am with thee alway-even to the end of the world." O distrust no more the hand that leads, or the heart that loves; but now, amidst the emanation of this fresh daybreak of your spirit's life, pour out your grateful soul like early incense to the Lord, while all around the morning stars sing together, and the sons of God are shouting for joy!

Better Late than Never!

A LECTURE

BY THE REV. A. MURSELL,

IN THE

FREE TRADE HALL, NOVEMBER 15TH, 1857.

LET me spend the half hour, which we hope to enjoy together this afternoon, in trying to urge you all to be men of business -not to spend all your energies on cotton, and in trying to get money-but in trying to get happiness, and the happiness which will last the longest. The title we have chosen reminds us that time is short, but still our happiness need not be short, for our best happiness begins its date beyond the grave.

I have thought of two texts in the Bible which, I think, ought, one of them, to remind us of the flight of time, and the other to urge us to improve it. The first is this:-"And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and swore by Him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are therein, and the earth and the things that are therein, and the sea and the things that therein are, that there should be time no longer."

The events of daily life are, in a general way, so even and monotonous that it requires something unusual to startle us from the apathy in which we spend our time. We get so used to the routine of events that we fancy that we shall live for ever, and that no interruption to our pursuits awaits us. It needs these recurring seasons to wake even the church of Christ to effort. The reason why our efforts for the spread of Christ's kingdom are not more efficient and successful, is that we suffer ourselves to forget the end at which we are striving, and put ourselves, like religious hacks, in a sort of moral harness, and then, with a dogged sense of duty and responsibility, begin to grind away at an evangelical treadmill, without stimulating our zeal, and quickening our devotion, by a forward glance

towards the prize of our high calling, or a joyous foretaste of our great reward. The want of adequate motives and incentives, is the secret of failure in many of the schemes of men. This cannot, however, be the reason of any failure on our part, in any department of Christian exertion. There is no absence of incentive, no lack of motive to complain of here. The prospect of the hastening end of time, with its rewards and punishments, with its crown of life and its sentence of death, even if there were no other and nobler incentives, would surely be sufficient to inflame our holy ambition on the one hand, and a wholesome dread on the other. How, then, with these and a thousand other sources of encouragement and warning, how is it that Christian zeal so often flags, and Christian effort grows supine? The secret seems to lie not in the want of the motive, but in the forgetfulness of it. We do not let the legitimate incentives to action have their legitimately inciting effect upon us. True, the formula of the work is gone through-public ordinances are duly observed-Sabbath school agency is maintained home and foreign missionary effort is put forth-but the work is prosecuted with a sort of humdrum monotony of spirit; there is none of the elasticity of soul which gives to each recurring opportunity of effecting good, a new zest and charm. The incentives are there, and are theoretically acknowledged and obeyed, but they are not practically admitted to play, in all their reviving power, on the jaded spirit. We work because we have been in the habit of doing so, not because we are touched by sympathy, or animated by a prospect of a crown of life. We put forth our efforts to ease our consciences, or to spend our time, and not because these consciences will soon be all that is left of us, and ere long time shall be no more. We get so absorbed in the work itself that we perform it sluggishly, and lose sight of the end after which we strive. Just as some men of business, who have laboured for years after the accumulation of a fortune, have on retiring upon that fortune, when obtained, actually died for the want of their old pursuits-having completely absorbed their desire for the end, in the habitual engrossment of the application of the means.

Thus we see that success in Christian effort, or indeed in any effort, depends upon bearing in mind the cause in which we labour, and the guerdon after which we strive. The merchant who strives for riches, makes all subservient to his end, and holds the object of his ambition ever before him. The warrior who struggles for glory, makes it his battle-cry in every attack, and the rallying word in every charge. Had Columbus for a moment forgotten