let us be thankful for themk. Justly did Jesus express his wonder at not seeing the other nine; much more will he if ive should forget to pay him our tribute of praise. Waiting for our approaches, he says, "Where are they?" Let him then see us daily prostrating ourselves before him, Let us be earnest in our thanksgivings, as well as in our prayers. Let us often consider how we may best express our sense of his good- ness1. In his strength let us go and shew ourselves to the world. Let us compel his very enemies to acknowledge his workm, and constrain them by our lives to confess the efficacy of his grace. Thus shall we most acceptably honour him on earth, and ere long be exalted to magnify his name in heaven.]
k Ps. xxx. 2 — 4. • Ps. cxvi. 12. m Ps. cxxvi. 2.
suddenness of Christ's second coming.
Luke xvii. 26 — 30. As it ivas in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it ivas in the days of Lot ; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and. brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
WE cannot be too often reminded, that religion is not a matter of speculation, but of practice. The replies which our Lord constantly made to specula- tive or curious inquiries, leads us to. this remark. He always endeavoured to turn the mind inwards, and to make every question that was put to him subservient to the spiritual welfare of his hearers. The Pharisees, ever deceiving themselves with the expectation of a temporal Messiah, asked him, " When the kingdom of God should come ?" He told them, that the Messiah's kingdom was not to be an outward and temporal one, such as they looked for, but an in- ward and spiritual kingdom, such as he himself was now establishing in the hearts of men. But as the na- tion at large would reject him, he warned his hearers,