can well conceive that a thousand years are literally and really a moment. Perhaps Christ meant that when He said, "a little while." But to us, in imperfection and sorrow, it seems very, very long. We need to remind ourselves it is an interval, a definite interval; it cannot exceed its appointed limit. We shall look back at it presently, and it will be only a little parenthesis, a very little parenthesis, in the book of our immortality. Our communion with them will close over it, and it will be as though it never was.

A great part of man's education lies in these intervals. The intellect is humbled, the heart is curbed, faith is trained, hopes are pointed, promises are sweetened, God is magnified. And are they not the growing times of mercies, the darkness brought in for no other end, but that the light may be seen in it?

But seeing, brethren, that the intervals are so many, it will be a wise thing to know how to deal with intervals.— What shall we do? We have a picture,—just what the apostles did those "ten days."

First, they had a word to rest on, and they did rest on it,—“Not many days, not many days,”-enough to prove faith, and yet to feed it,-"Not many days." If hope would stand on tiptoe, she must have a staff to lean on. One word of God is that staff. Take care that you have it firm under you.-"I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word is my hope."

Secondly, they had grand views of God. How could they be three years with Him, and not have grand thoughts? Here is another secret of waiting well,—it is the leisure of God that I am waiting for. Oh! how one glimpse of the Eternal rectifies our poor ideas, and gives

their true proportions to time and space! Whatever outward circumstances are saying, take sublime, worthy, honoring views of God. .

Thirdly, they all kept close together, "with one accord." And if there be one thing which can sweeten and shorten the long, dull hours of the discipline of expectation, it is union, union. Only let us throw more love, more oneness into everything,-into the family circle, into the world, into the Church,—and I do not say that it will hasten, but I say that it will be the same thing as if it did hasten,—for it will make the time fly very quickly to the long-desired end.

And fourthly, in their union, those good men worked. They did the best work,-the only work they could do;— they might not leave Jerusalem; but there, in the inner circle of duty, they cultivated their own hearts, they worshipped God, they prayed, they interceded, they set their own house in order, they restored their proper symmetry, they completed the apostleship. And so they wrought, and so the time was soon over; and the day, the looked-for day, rose upon them.

When I read these things which those disciples did, I no longer wonder how those bereft men were able to pass those ten dark days so cheerfully. I understand now the secret of that very remarkable description with which St. Luke closes his gospel,-"They returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen." And if only you will so trust, so believe, so love, so serve, so work, your interval through, -the Lord, well pleased, will soon find the leisure to come back to you, and in His hand all, and more than all, you wish,—and best of all, His own approving smile, that you have waited well.

VIII.

The Religion of Fear.

"For I feared thee."-LUKE xix. 21.

SUCH

UCH was the account, the only account, which a person could give why he had lived a useless,—and because a useless, a wicked,—life. There was, indeed, in his wickedness, as there is in all inconsistency and contradiction.

wickedness, a strange For he who could say,

and truly say, as the secret of his whole life, "I feared thee," was nevertheless the man to stand up with a most shameless effrontery, and say to the God whom he dreaded, words too insolent to be used even to a fellow man,— "Because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow." So exceedingly remote may fear be from reverence; so easily may dread make common cause with daring.

You will observe that this man in the parable did not fear God because God was great, and lofty, and holy. Had his fear rested on that ground, probably he would not have been much blamed; or, more probably still, his mind would not have been allowed to remain in that state. He did not, in fact, fear God for anything which God really is; he feared God for what God is not. And here was at once the nature of his fear, and its guilt,—it arose

from false views of God, for which the man was responsible.

God forbid that I should to-night handle this delicate matter so roughly, or speak so rashly, as to make no distinction between the constitutionally timid and the resolutely fearful,-between those who fear because they do not dare, and those who fear because they do not wish, to love,-between those who settle down in their fears, and those who are always wrestling and emancipating themselves from their thraldom. "The fearful" who lead the van in that awful procession in the Revelation, which is seen going down into the pit, are not the unhappy, but the determined fearers,—not the men who think salvation too good to be true, but the men spell-bound by the fascination of their own evil consciences,-not those who cannot think themselves worthy to go to a good God, but those who separate themselves from Him as an austere one.

Carrying along with us, then, this distinction, I wish to speak to you, brethren, to-night, of the great peril which there is in that state of heart which fears upon a principle, and which thinks that fear is a right motive for Christian action.

If you ask many persons what their idea of religion is, it would be something like this: "It is a very sublime thing, but it is severe." They see almost a repulsiveness in the strict requirements of the Bible. They speak of very religious people as too rigid. What is the real meaning of all that? If religion be austere, then the God who gave it must be austere. Look into your own conceptions of God. Are you not thinking of God as a

God who looks very much at people's faults,-who rather looks at their faults? Does not He seem to you

sometimes as if He expected too much from you,—as if He did not remember enough your peculiar circumstances, your weakness and your difficulties? Do not you

feel inclined to complain of what you would call, in a fellow-creature,-a want of sympathy with you? Have not you sometimes wondered that there is so much in the Bible to terrify a man,-and have not you wished that there had been more about mercy, and less about judgment? Do not some of the doctrines of the Bible seem to

you shuddering? Have not you, in your puny thoughts, arraigned the Most High God, and had hard feelings about Him, because He had not dealt with you as He dealt with somebody else, giving you less, and yet expecting from you more? Nay, I solemnly ask you, does not God sometimes pass before your mind as a Being of whom, on the whole, you would rather that He were not? -a Being much more awful than loveable,-not a Father, but a Judge,-not a Judge, but a Punisher ?—and the Second Advent not only not an attractive thought, but so terrible, that you would, if you could, keep it always in the background? Shall I say too much if I say that I believe that such is the state of mind of some this moment in this church, that they would be glad and gratefully content to give up the doctrine that there is a heaven, if thereby they could get rid of the doctrine that there is a hell?

Such are some of the states of many who will have to make the retrospect of life,—"I feared.” For remember, I am not going to deal to-night with those who have no inward workings on religious subjects,-nor with those who are destitute of respect for divine truth,—but with those who, when they might have had light, wilfully