improved the day of their visitation, and fled to the ark for refuge ! Thus pungent, thus fruitless, will be the remorse of millions in the day of judgment. But, blessed be God ! the ark is not yet closed : it is open for all who will flee unto it : the Lord Jesus Christ never did, nor ever will, close the door against a repenting sinner: he came to seek and to save the lost ; yea, he shed his blood upon the cross to save them. To every one of you then would we say, " Come my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut the door about thee, and hide thyself for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast0." But, if you will not hear, know of a certainty, that " your judgment lingereth not, and your damnation slumberethnotp :" for, " if God spared not the angels that sinned . . . nor the old world . . . nor Sodom ; but saved Noah . . . and delivered Lot, he knows at this time how to deliver the godly out of tempta- tions, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished q."]
2. Those amongst you who make a profession of vital godliness —
[This subject may appear to some of you to be calculated to awaken sinners, but not very well suited to the edification of saints. This conceit appears to have entered into the mind of Christ's Disciples ; and to have been justly reproved by him : for, who is he that needs not such an admonition1? We grant, that here are no new truths brought to our view : " you know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night;" and that when men shall say, ' Peace and safety,' then destruction shall come upon them as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. Ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day : we are not of the night nor of darkness s." But is this subject there- fore uninstructive to you? Hear how the Apostle continues his address to the very persons whom he has thus described : " Therefore let us not sleep as do others ; but let us watch and be sober : let us who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-plate of faith and love, and, for an helmet, the hope of salvation1." Hear also how another Apostle addresses the whole Christian Church : " The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night . . . Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness; looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God ? . . . Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found
0 Isai. xxvi. 20. P 2 Pet. ii. 3. °* 2 Pet. ii. 4—9.
r Matt. xxiv. 44— 46. s 1 Thess. v. 2— 5. * lThess.v.6 — 8.
c2