woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel! For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me."

In functions spiritual the clergy occupy the heights, the laity the levels. Yet as the Church at large is "a royal priesthood," even the least and last of us may win something practical by contemplating an angelic preacher traversing heaven.

"Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all."

"The everlasting Gospel "-unaltered, unalterable. To its immutability St. Paul bears witness: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."-A text for my times and for myself.

"For the hour of His judgment is come."-Yet notwithstanding, and indeed therefore ("for"), men being summoned to fear God are further called upon to give Him glory; worshipping Him as the Creator. The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save: it is man's eleventh hour; Achan may yet appease Him in death Whom in life he provoked; the Thief extirpated from earth may yet sit down in Paradise.

O my God, regard man at his last chance; regard man setting himself to make his final choice; regard man in the poised balance which must dip. By Thy dear Son's last agony, by His giving up the Ghost, regard, regard man for whom He died, and suffer him not for ever to say Thee nay.

When the end of all things is at hand, it is a comfort to be reminded that heaven, earth, sea, fountains of waters, overwhelmed as they are about to be by awful judgments, are yet all of them God's work, and therefore good. Let me not be more perverse than the clay, which saith not to the potter, Why hast thou made me thus?

8. And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

Some have thought to identify the site and structure of a local "Babylon." As to me, who can by no means identify

them, I think not I need therefore miss my practical lesson from her greatness and her fall.

Wherefore fell she? The Angel declares, because of what she did; not otherwise because of what she was. Let me (if I may) consider her as that World, which in some sort seems to form common ground, a point of contact, a link, a conductor, between flesh and devil.

Long ago Satan boasted to Christ's very Face that "all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them" were delivered unto him; nor did the Truth then and there give the lie to the father of lies. If, then, we may assume an ingredient of truth in the assertion, that element of truth supplies a clue to the fascination and domination of the world; a fascination which is deadly, a domination which is tyrannous. For Satan is the showman of her goodly show: he who can himself appear as an angel of light understands how to inflate her scale, tint her mists and bubbles with prismatic colours, hide her thorns under roses and her worms under silk. He can paint her face, and tire her head, and set her on a wall and at a window, as the goal of a vain race, and the prize of a vain victory. David, superb in his kingliness, made to himself instruments of music; and so has she her men singers and women singers, her brazen wind instruments and her hollow drums. She spreads a feast first her best, afterwards that which is worse; apples of Sodom to follow forbidden fruit. And as to her cup, "all nations" have not unwarned drunk of it: "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things." If this be true of earth's vintage, how tenfold true of the world's!

The City and Woman appear so indistinguishable in the Apocalyptic vision as to justify (I trust) my confusion of personification. Temptation, by a common instinct, seems to be personified as feminine: let us thence derive courage; the symbol itself insinuating that as woman is weaker than man, so temptation is never so strong as the individual assailed. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."

We daughters of Eve may beyond her sons be kept humble by that common voice which makes temptation feminine.

Woman is a mighty power for good or for evil. She constrains though she cannot compel. Potential for evil, it becomes her to beware and forbear; potential for good, to spend herself and be spent for her brethren. In the Bible the word tempt (or its derivatives) is used in a good or in an evil sense, according to the agent or to the object aimed at.

The wisest of three wrote: "Women are strongest"; and said: "Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women."

Babylon is fallen," saith the Angel: he saith not, Is cast down. Though she be cast down, yet is the impulse of her casting down in herself; she hath undermined herself. Sin is the essential destroyer: the sinner is self-destroyed. Drunkenness especially sets this truth as in a picture before our eyes; drunkenness being the example of a general rule, not its exception.

Taking physical corruption as the foul image of sin, we see how it consists not with stability, permanence; but dissolves, disintegrates its prey. It turns bone to dust, muscle as it were to pulp we loathe to look upon it in a body; who shall bear to look upon it in a soul?

9. And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, 10. The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

11. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

"I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not yea, I sought him, but he could not be found."

Before when we read of these beast and image worshippers they appeared, as David beheld their predecessors, flourishing and exalted. But alas! it is only as regards earth that such pass away and cannot be found: "in the presence of the holy angels, and in the Presence of the Lamb" they reappear; but tormented, smoking, without rest, without apparent help or hope.

Nor perhaps does it clearly transpire when it is that their interminable unrest begins whether before, or consequent upon the decree of judgment. As later on we shall read of darkness pervading the kingdom of the beast, while apparently it continues as yet to be a kingdom; so now haply the restlessness begins even before it writhes impotently amid the fire, brimstone, smoke.

This retribution is "in the Presence of the Lamb"; by which awful word I discern not whether there be implied the finishing sting of all agony, or some lessening of horror. Yet is not "Depart from Me a more overwhelming sentence than even this? To be "clean forgotten" seems a desperateness of forlornness.

"The wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation."-Indignation is ominous of justice: is His mercy clean gone for ever? We see not our tokens.

"They have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image."-Another worship there is carried on elsewhere, there is another company of worshippers of whom we read (chap. iv. 8), that "they rest not day and night." But (if having no power to study the original text, I may dwell on the wording of the translation) an absolute contrast is suggested by the two statements. Not to rest, is voluntary to have no rest, is involuntary. The Beatified rest not from adoration, because adoration is the joy of their hearts, the breath of their nostrils: rest (could such a dispensation be conceived) would inflict on them the restlessness as it were of a pent-up conflagration; to keep silence from their good words would be not rest, but pain and grief to them. The accursed have and can have no rest, because they abide at eninity with Him by Whose grace there remaineth rest for His people.

12. Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

"Here"-where ? Wherever else, "in the Presence of the

Lamb."

That Presence indeed is everywhere; and all saints clad in patience, keeping the commandments, and cleaving to the faith, inhabit the all-embracing Presence. A shadowed life is no hardship to loving souls consciously abiding under the shadow of the Almighty; weary indeed would this world's land be without the shadow of that Great Rock!

Patience is an advanced grace. In children we try to forestall reason by faith, and by early habit to constitute obedience their second nature; but patience we wish not to characterize them at the outset. Of course nothing contrary to patience can we desire for them at any period; but we remember that "tribulation worketh patience," and if we can we shelter our harmless little ones awhile from tribulation.

At this point of the Revelation, after so many Fatherly Lovingkindnesses and terrors of the Lord have been laid bare --for amid unfathomable mystery the great Love wherewith God loves us, and the tremendous woe from which He would fence us, stand out as clear as day-at this point, patience once more meets the pilgrim soul. All I have read, then, is to lead me up to patience: patience under ignorance, patience under fear, patience under hope deferred, patience so long as free will entails the terrific possibility of self-destruction; patience until (please God) my will freely, finally, indefectibly, becomes one with the Divine Will. Pending which beatific moment, it ought to be with each of us according to St. Paul's description: "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by Whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations. also knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."

"Who is there among you of all His people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up."

Obedience is the fruit of faith; patience, the bloom upon the fruit.

13. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.