HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1---8.-" ~ torath qf God." Such is the subject of this and the following chapter& , I. WHAT IS IT? "The wrath of God" is simply that will of God which fOl' evs baa linked together sin and su:lfering; that will by which woe follows wickedness every.- where and alway& It is calm, not passion&te; inexorable, not capricioua; ever just, 1111 man'a wrath too often is not; and never selfish, M ours too often is. II. Is TERRIBLE TO EVIL-DOERS. See the sever•l symbols of it 88 they are given one by one in the account of the outpouring of the seven viale. And, separate from all 1yrnbol, see how everywhere and always and evermore, suffering, like a sleuth-hound- tracks the steps of sin, and sooner or later fastens its fangs in the sinful man or sinful people. So sure is this, that that shrewd, wise, observant. man who wrote the Book df Proverbs declared it 88 the testimony of all experience that they are "fools" who "make a mock at sin." III. WILL HAVB AR END. Not that the will of God, without which he could neither be the God of holiness nor the God of love; that ordains the everlasting union of sin with sulfering-not. that that will can ever end or change, but that, the purpose of his will being aooomplished by the extirpation of sin, there shall no longer be occasio• for suffering. Hence we say the wrath of God will have an end. · And accordingly these very. plagues are called " the. seven last plagues." It would be dre&d.ful to think tha, the moral condition of men should ever be as it is, and has been during all the paat. But it will not. The day will dawn when there will no longer be need for any more plagues, and when the last of them, they all having done their work, ahal.l p&1111 away for ev:ermore (ver. 1). IV. Is OONSENTED TO BY .lLL THE COMPANY o:r HEAVEN, The saints, they celebrate its manifestation by their song. The living ones (ver. 7) consi,,an &o the charge of the seven angels the seven vials of the wrath of God. Angels, who come forth from the inmost shrine of the temple of God, and are veated as his priests, undertake this awful work; the holy, the blessed, the glorified, the redeemed, those saved by the mercy of God, all alike consent.· It is a fearful, but a most solemn and salutary fact, to remember that there will not be found a solitary individual amongst the holy and the good who will intercede against or do aught but consent to God's judgments against Bin. Even he who is the Lamb of God, the Friend and Saviour of sinners, consents; yea, more than this, for it is his song that his saints sing in celebration of these judgments of God. Left utterly alone with his sin-without one friend-will he be who now refuses t.o give UJ> his siB and submit to Christ. V. EVIDE~OES THE HOLINESS OF GoD. (Vera. 3, 4.) The conviction constrains the COD• feesion, "Thon only art holy;" "Righteous and true are thy ways "-so sing they who sing the song of Moses and of the La.rob. What worth is any government, what worth especially would be the government of God, if it were as the sceptic cynic in Ecclesiastes says it is, that" there is one end t.o the righteous and to the wicked"? There would be no n~ of a hell by-and-by, for earth would be hell already. Blessed for ever be hil N!!,Dle, who makc.s "the way of transgressors hard." 11.BVELA'l'ION, 2 0 386 THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. [011. xv. 1-8
VL WILL BE FOLLOWED BY THE OOHING « OF ALL NATIONS TO WORSHIP BEJ'OBE 1 Gon. (Ver. 4.) This most precious truth ex.plains the 80ng that the saints sing. How eould they sing if sin and suffering _were to go on for ever; if evil were to be eternal, m if the woes of the world meani the destruction of the world'} But knowing and seein~ clearly, as they do, how all these judgments of God conduce to the glory of God; and that as the cloud of his majesty filled the temple (ver. 8), so shall that glory fill all the earth; therefore they can, not merely with calmness, but with joy, contemplate thE pouring out of the vials, even of the wrath of God. But for the faith of this how could thoughtful men endure to live? ' VIL WARlill US TO FLEE FROH THE WICKEDNKSil THAT AROUSES IT TO THE LoRD JESUS CHRIST. For he it is in whom we are sheltered from the wrath due to sin of the past, and from the power of sin preswt and future.-S. C.