SERMON VIII.

"THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES."

ST. MATTHEW xvi. 2, 3.

He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red, and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

AS my concluding address to you upon the subject which has latterly occupied some portion of our attention here, I revert to the sacred text under which I first introduced it to your notice. Every portion of the Divine Word is in itself "holy, and wise, and good,” and should be "profitable" to us; but the very words which fell from our blessed and compassionate Saviour's own lips while, for our sake, he was “a man of sorrows and acquainted "with grief," seem fraught with peculiar and

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most inviting argument: for what he spake he "spake as never man spake;" and what he intended thereby was that, in which we are each most nearly interested, his great purchased gift of our soul's redemption in himself.

For it was simply out of love to immortal souls that he asked of his enemies around him, "Can ye not discern the signs of the times?" And it is still from the same infinite love, that this merciful warning has come down to us in his blessed word; and whether we be his friends, as some are, or his enemies, as many are, in pity and proferred mercy to our immortal souls, he still points to his Cross raised at his first advent, and to his Throne prepared for his second advent, and asks of every one of us, "Can ye not discern the signs of the times?"

In the consideration of this whole subject, I have endeavoured to guard myself from ascribing, and you from expecting that I ascribed, some specific fulfilment of prophetic truth. close at hand, because we live amid marked providences of God, such as, in their combined character, the world has never yet witnessed before. And I conclude this subject with the same caution. For though it would indeed be a most awakening and a most glorious theme

in thought, in prayer, in triumphant and sure expectation to dwell upon, that the ages of sin had well nigh filled up the measure of their iniquity, and that millenial glory were at hand; or that in the near approach of the end of all things, sin should be finally arrested, and shut up in eternity with its author, no more to pollute God's "new heaven and new earth, "wherein dwelleth righteousness," for ever; still is it safer, because in itself it is a certain truth, and an evident duty, that we fully believe the practical intent, and leave these links in the great chain of fulfilling prophecy to speak their own position in what further they may portend.

But to every true believer, who in the works and ways of providence, as well as in the dispensations of grace, seeks for the will of God, it will not be less an argument for increased watchfulness and prayer because he discerns signs, and confesses that he knows not yet the thing signified, than it ought to be an awful call to the unbeliever, the mere nominal professor of the Gospel, to deepest penitence and thought, in that he cannot interpret the end of what he acknowledges to be an unusual and a marked incident of his day.

To this end, my brethren, I have endeavoured to guide your attention, whether you be found among those who have already received, and daily strive to act upon "the truth as it is in "Jesus;" or whether, amid the pursuits and pleasures of this dangerous and deceitful world, you strive to be content with the forms, and as yet know nothing of the power of vital godliness. I do not venture to affirm of these six signs before us that they are signs of something yet to come: I should not presume so to interpret them as to give them a definite character in the great chain of prophetic truth. It is better that we await the ultimate result, if there be any thing specific preparing hereby, and seize the manifest call, as a spiritual lesson for present spiritual profit, that in the awfully displayed wonders of God's power and providence we read what he intends for our own individual watchfulness. But to that extent our mutual duty, mine to suggest and exhort, your's to consider and apply, is quite apparent: for when such a combination of extraordinary incident, affecting whole nations, and giving a new character to much of the complexion of private life, when such events pass before us, we cannot err in looking more closely into ourselves,

and should undoubtedly sin in not regarding

them.

To induce you so to look with nearer view into your own hearts, I have put that practical character upon the whole matter, as to show that it was your souls' good, and not mere speculative opinions, which was my great and leading motive. If I, as your Minister, erred not in taking these events in God's rule and providence over us as an imperative duty upon myself so to construe them as a fit subject of ministerial usefulness, it will be further my duty to urge your consideration of the manner and spirit with which the performance of that duty, on my part, has been received by you. To say that I have preached without offence, would be to say what no Minister of Christ, who endeavours to look for the straight forward path of duty in what he does, ought, in the present state of the world, to be prepared to hear. When deathless souls, whether for a Lord's Day weekly address, as in this lowest trust in the vineyard of Christ, or in the far higher and more honourable distinction of a parochial watchman over the sheep of Christ's fold, when deathless souls are in any way committed to our care and interest, there are solemn