of the kingdom, and the arrival of the longexpected king.

And as unity in the Church would lead to the study of the prophetic Scriptures, so the study of these Scriptures would lead to still greater unity. Friends who dwell far asunder, with a continent, or perhaps an ocean between them, have often agreed to gaze each night upon some bright star of the firmament and have felt how much this tended to keep awake their warm affection, and to strengthen the tie that bound them to each other's hearts. So the Church of Christ, fixing her eye upon the "bright and morning star," and keeping before her the hope of the glorious advent, is strengthening the bonds of love between all her members. The stedfast contemplation of a common hope, and a common inheritance, with the mutual converse of united hearts about the expected glory, cannot fail to draw together more closely into one the divided members of the body.

It has been sometimes strangely said, that such studies are unprofitable, and though some ought to give heed to them, yet Christians in general may find some safer and more useful employment. We have said enough we trust already, to disprove this, as well as to show the sinfulness of such a thought. But besides what has been stated, the very nature of things forbids and condemns the idea. Prophecy

is not designed for the mere gratification of curious men; it is the nourishment of part of our very nature. We should be but half fed without it.

We are by nature as instinctively prospective as retrospective creatures. Our eye was formed to glance forward with as intense and eager interest into the uncertainties of the future as to hold intercourse with past and present realities. We cannot help this. It is our nature. It may often be in a state of diseased extravagance, but still it is our nature. We cannot help our anticipative propensities any more than we can extinguish memory. We are formed to look into the future; and we feel that nothing can be more natural; for the sunshine or the shadows of that future are hastening on to us apace, and we shall soon be compassed about with them on every side.

Our picture of that future, then, must be filled up either with shadows-phantoms of our own creation—or with the revelations of inspired prophecy. We cannot help speculating and conjecturing, either to "cast the fashion of uncertain evil," or to spread before us the vision of " scenes surpassing fable." The past is all fixed and gone ; the present may be restless; still it is within our grasp; but futurity is too full of our destinies to allow us to smile at its uncertainties. Every moment comes loaded with fresh arrivals from the

unknown shore, compelling us to vigilant forethought; so that fear and hope must be utterly torn from our breast, and the future forbidden to cast forward its shadows and hang out its portents, ere we can lie down at ease, absorbed in present realities, and torpidly indifferent to all that the future may in a moment let down upon us from its mysterious and inaccessible eminences.

We speak not of that vain curiosity that would fain sink the insipid monotony of present duty in the restless anticipations of change and novelty, but that wise and needful concern about the future which our Lord did not condemn when he said, "Take heed, behold I have foretold you all things," which Peter cherished when he said, "Ye have a more sure word of prophecy to which ye do well to take heed as to a light shining in a dark place," and which the Old Testament saints exercised when they "searched what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow."

Besides, the soul of man is not so narrow and simple a thing that the belief of one truth will mould it into the form desired. Every part, every principle, every faculty and feeling must have truths presented to them precisely adapted to their nature and exercise, else they must remain unde

veloped, or, if developed, remain unsanctified. Our reasoning faculty must be addressed, or it must wither up by remaining uncultivated; and accordingly there is ample scope in Scripture for its energies to work upon. Our propensity for imitation, observation, and acquisition of experience must be addressed, and it is met by the graphic narratives of Old and New Testament history. Our finer and higher feelings must be touched, and we have the poetic richness of seer and psalmist to attract and improve them. Our prospective propensities must be guided and moulded, or else they will grow rank over fields of their own luxuriant but unhallowed; creation and the prophetic Word must be spread before us that these feelings may be sanctified. Most mercifully, most marvellously, has God framed his revelation, that by its largeness and variety it may compass our whole nature, and adapt itself to every part of our being. We have not to cut down and contract the manifold instincts of our soul, in order to bring it into the likeness of Christ. We have not to strike off one affection, or leave one desire to waste unnourished, so as to fix ourselves in a state of unnatural constraint, and concentrate into a single point the various outgoings of our nature; but, on the contrary, every principle within is provided with a corresponding

truth without, by which it may be controlled and purified.

If, then, we are to be wholly sanctified only by a belief of the whole truth; and if every truth neglected be so much injury to our souls, how can we palliate the guilt or slight the danger of those who wilfully neglect one truth of God-one chapter of his revelation? To slight any section of the Word of God, is just to say either that we do not desire to be wholly sanctified, wholly cast into the Divine mould, or that that section of the Word is unnecessary for our holiness and transformation. To complain of obscurity in the prophecies is an attempt to palliate our own guilt by fastening blame upon the Word. To plead this fancied obscurity as an excuse for omitting their study, is strange obliquity of logic, as well as of conscience. It makes the very circumstance which in everything else is deemed the strongest argument for doubling the intensity of thought and appliance, a reason for indifference and pretermission. To say that these obscure parts cannot be so profitable as the rest, is to maintain that God has written difficulties in his Word which will not repay the labour of investigation, even when successful. Surely there is no part of revealed truth so unimportant as that we should grudge the toil of searching it out?