ian era-(this, too, has been counterfeited) and possess living men in heathen lands, or in the places where Christianity has made little progress, is not altogether improbable. Of this, indeed, we have not satisfactory evidence, and therefore ought not to properly rendered, "Against wicked spirits in the regions of the air." Paul's shipwreck at Malta by the Euroclydon, and Job's misfortunes by an Arabian tempest, demonstrate the ærial power of this great antagonist when permitted to exert it against those he envies and calum-speak dogmatically. I know many niates. affect to regard the whole matter as a piece of childish superstition, as did our two first great poets, Scott and Byron; who, nevertheless, like them, are under the influence of that same childish superstition. One thing is abundantly evident and satisfactory spirits is vast and overwhelming, and although their hatred to the living is intense and enduring, the man of God, the true Christian, has a guardian angel, or a host of sentinels around him that never sleep; and, therefore, against him the fiery darts of Satan and the wiles of the roaring lion are employed in vain. For this we erect in our hearts a monument of thanks to Him who has been, and still is, the Supreme Philanthropist and Redeemer of our race. Evident it is, then, from such testimonies, facts, and allusions, that the atmosphere, or rather the regions above it, the ethereal or empyreal, and not heaven, nor earth, nor hell, is the proper residence of the ghosts of wicked men. They have repeat--that although the numbers of such edly declared their perfect punishment or torment as yet future, and after the coming of the Lord, when he shall send the Devil and his emissaries into an eternal fire. How often did they say to Jesus, "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" That they are miserable, wretchedly miserable, is inferrible from the abhorrence of the nudity and awful forebodings of their present position. They vehemently desire to be embodied again. They seek rest, but find none; and would rather possess any bodies, even the swine, than continue naked and dispossessed. Their prison is called by the Messiah "outer darkness;" by Paul it is called epourania-high places, ærial regions. This is the Hebrew-Greek name of that region where there is neither atmosphere nor light; for, strange though it may appear to uneducated minds, the limits of our atmosphere are the limits of all terrestrial light. These intervals between the atmospheres of the planets is what we would call "outer darkness." Could a person ascend only some fifty miles above this earth, he would find himself surrounded with everlasting night; no ray from sun, or moon, or stars could find him where there is no medium of reflection. That they may still inspire oracles, as they were wont before the Christ This view of demonology not only vindicates the law of Moses from the imputation of catering to the superstitious prejudices of mankind, by regarding as real the most idle fictions and pretences; and justifies Paul in placing witchcraft amongst the works of the flesh; it not only affords to weak and doubting minds new and striking evidences of a spiritual system; it not only developes our great indebtedness to the Author of the Christian faith in rescuing man from the tyranny of the arch apostate, the Prince of Demons; but it also inducts us into still more grand and sublime views of the magnitude, variety, and extent of the world of spirits-of our relations to themand throws some light upon our present liabilities to impressions, suggestions, and influences from classes of agents wholly invisible and inappreciable by any of those senses which connect us with external and sensible existence. That we are susceptible of impressions and suggestions from invisible agents sometimes affecting our passions and actions, it were foolish and infidel to deny. How many thousands of well-authenticated facts are found in the volumes of human experience of singular, anomalous, and inexplicable impulses and impressions wholly beyond all human associations of ideas, yet leading to actions evidently essential to the salvation of the subjects of them, or of others under their care, from imminent perils and disasters, to which, but for such kind offices, they must inevitably have fallen victims. And how many, in the midst of a wicked and foolish career, have, by some malign agency, been suddenly and unexpectedly led into the most fatal coincidences, and suddenly precipitated to ruin, when such unprecedented exigencies are exceptions to all the known laws of cause and effect, and inexplicable to all their wonted courses of action! To assign to these any other than a spiritual cause, it seems to me, were to assign a non causa pro causa; for on no theory of mind or body can they be so satisfactorily explained, and so much in harmony with the Bible way of representing such incidents. Thus the angel of the Lord smote Herod that he died, and in various dreams admonished the faithful of the ways and means of escaping impending evils. Will it not be perceived and admitted that if evil demons can enter into men's bodies, and even take away reason, as well as excite to various preternatural actions, and if in legions they may crowd their influences upon one unhappy victim, spirits, either good or bad, may make milder and more delicate approaches to the fountains of human action, and stir men up to efforts and enterprizes for weal or woe, according to their respective characters and ruling passions? Certain it is that angels, beings' too, of a more embodied and less abstract existence, have not only demonstrated their ability to assume the human form, but to exert such influence upon the outward man as to prompt him to immediate actionas in the case of Peter, who was suddenly stricken on the side by the hand of an angel when fast asleep between a Roman guard, and roused to action. The gates and bars of the prison open at his approach, and shut on his escape, touched by the same hand; and thus the Apostle is rescued from the malice of his foes. What an extended view of the intellectual and moral universe opens to our contemplation from this point! We see an outward, visible, and immense expanse every where, studded with constellations of suns and their attendant systems, circling in unmeasured orbits around one invisible and omnipotent centre that controls them all. Amazed and overwhelmed at these stupendous displays of creative power, wisdom, and goodness, in adoring ecstacy we inquire into the uses of these mighty orbs, which, in such untold millions, diversify and adorn these undefined fields of ethereal beauty that limit our ideas of an unbounded and inconceivable space. Reasoning from all our native analogies, and from the scattering rays of supernal light that have from suns unseen reached the world, we must infer that all these orbs are the mansions of social beings, of every conceivable variety of intelligence, capacity, and employment; and that in organized hierarchies, thrones, principalities, and lordships, they constitute each within itself an independent world; of which societies we are allowed to conclude that there are as many varieties of intellectual and moral organization and development as there are planets for their residence. In all these intellectual assemblages, spread over the area of universal that took part with him in his primeval defection and rebellion. How numerous they are, and how concentrated in their efforts, may be gleaned from sundry allusions in the inspired writings, especially from the melancholy history of the unfortunate Gadarene who dwelt among the tombs, tortured by a legion of them being, there are but two distinct and essentially diverse confederationsone under the rightful sovereignty of Messiah the Lord of all, and the other under the usurped dominion of that antagonist spirit of insubordination and self-will which has spread over our planet all the anarchy and misrule, all the darkness and gloom, all the sorrow and death which have-not, perhaps, by six thousand embittered life, and made countless millions groan in spirit and sigh for a discharge from a conflict between good and evil, pleasure and pain, so unequal and oppressive. This rebel angel, of such singular and mysterious character, is always found in the singular number-as the Satan, the Devil, and the Apollyon of our race. With him are confederate all disloyal spirits that have conspired against Heaven's own will in adoration of their own. In reference to this usurper and his angelic allies against the Lord's Annointed, we are obliged to consider those unhappy spirits, who, during their incarnation, took sides with him in his mad rebellion against the Eternal King. The number of angels that took part with him in his original conspiracy remains amongst the secrets of eternity, and is not to be divulged till the Devil and his angels, for whom Tophet was of old prepared, shall be separated from the social systems of the universe, and publicly sentenced to the bottomless gulph of irremediable ruin. The whole human race, at one time or other, have been involved in this war against Heaven. Many have, indeed, deserted the dark banners of Beelzebub, and have become sons of light. Hitherto, alas! the great majority have perished in the field of rebellion, and gone down to the pit with all their armour on. These spirits, shown to be the demons of all antiquity, sacred and profane, are now a component part of the empire of Satan, and as much under his control as the original conspirators demons in full tale, according to the full standard of a Roman legion; but by an indefinite and immense multitude. How innumerable, then, the agents, demoniacal and angelic, on Satan's side! What hosts of fallen men and fallen angels have conspired against the happiness of God's moral empire! No wonder that Satan is sometimes spoken of as omnipresent! If Napoleon, in the day of his power, while in the palace of the Tuilleries, was said to be at work in Spain, in Portugal, in Belgium, and in France at the same time with how much less of the figurative, and more of the literal, may Satan, whose agents are incomparably more multitudinous and diversified, as well as of vastly superior agility and power, be represented as wielding a sort of omnipresent power in all parts of our terraqueous habitation? And how malignant too! The fabled Furies themselves were not more fierce than those unclean and mischievous spirits whose sweetest pleasure it was to torture, with the most convulsive agonies, those unhappy victims whom they chose to mark out for themselves. But here we must pause; and with this awful group of exasperated and malicious demons in our horizon, it is some relief to remember that there are many good spirits of our race, allied with ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands of angels of light, all of whom are angels of mercy and sentinels of defence around the dwellings of the righteous, the true elite of our race. events that are yet to transpire, which are the subjects of prediction found in God's holy word, and which relate to events connected with the Christian's blessed hope-I mean the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, together with some of the events which are to take place in that glorious and happy period called the Millennium, I will, with all due deference to other people's opinions, present some of my thoughts on those soul-stirring and all-absorbing matters. I am not unapprised that great and good men differ on these subjects; but this ought not to deter others from examining for them These, we learn from high authority, are ministering spirits waiting on the heirs of salvation. These attending spirits know our spiritual foes, and are able to cope with them; for when Satan and Michael fought for the body of Moses, the fallen seraph was driven to the wall, and lost the day. For how many services rendered, for how many deliverances from evil spirits and from physical disasters, we are indebted to the good and benevolent, though invisible agents around us, will never be known, and therefore never told on earth; but it may nevertheless be known and told hereafter. And with what unspeakable plea-selves, that revelation which God has sure may some happy being in this assembly yet sit down, side by side, with his own guardian spirit, under the eternally verdant boughs of the life-restoring tree in the paradise of God, and listen to the ten thousand deliverances effected for him by the kind ministrations of that generous and beneficent minister of grace, that watched his path, numbered his steps, and encamped around his bed from the first to the last moment of his terrestrial day! With what grateful emotions will the ransomed spirit listen to the bold adventures and the triumphant rencounters with belligerent foes, of his kind and successful deliverer; and while, in the midst of such social raptures, he throws his immortal arms around his kind benefactor, he lifts his bright and beaming eye of grateful piety to Him who gave him such a friend and deliverer in the time of peril and of need, and who, through such a scene of trials and of conflicts, brought him safely to the peaceful city of eternal rest! graciously given for the benefit of all. In presenting my views on the matter here introduced, I have not the vanity to suppose that I know more than others. Neither is it my intention to enter a field of controversy with any person, but merely to lay before the brethren some things which I think are calculated in their nature to encourage them to hold on their happy way until their journey shall land them safe in those elysian fields of endless glory where God and their Saviour shall be their light, and their sun for ever and ever. If I can be the means of affording aid and comfort to the brethren, of speeding them on their pilgrimage in this state of trial, it will be the height of my ambition-all that I anticipate in what I have to offer upon this heavenly and glorious theme. I know that those prophecies which have received their accomplishment, are much more easily understood than those that have not been fulfilled; but we must dig in the mines of salvation, if we would enjoy the blessings that our kind heavenly Father has promised us. Bread is sweet to the labouring man, and he that will not work neither shall he eat. To me it is obvious that those prophecies which related to the Redeemer's first advent, did receive a literal accomplishment. If so, who can show any good reason why those | holy angels with him, then shall he predictions which relate to his second sit upon the throne of his glory,” appearing will not receive a similar fulfilment ? At all events, I shall so consider those prophecies which I shall bring to my aid in this undertaking. But to our object. My first proposition is OF OUR LORD. Matt. xxv. 31. "And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that THE LITERAL AND PERSONAL COMING obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ," 2 Thes. i. 7-10. "And the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee," Zech. xiv. 5. Let scene- "I beheld till the thrones were cast down, (all human governments overthrown) and the ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool. His throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him. Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thou was set, and the books were opened. I saw in the night visions, and behold one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days; and they brought him near before him, and there was given him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away; and his kingdom that which shall not be de "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him; and all kin-us hear Daniel describe the glorious dreds of the earth shall wail because of him," Rev. i. 7.-" And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." If the language here employed by inspiration does not prove our proposi-sand stood before him. The judgment tion, I do not know of any that would. Every eye shall see him." He shall come as he went away. The very same Jesus that went away shall come again. Once more- "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God," 1 Thes. iv, 16. Paul does not say that the Lord shall descend spiritually. But the Lord himself shall descend. Can we understand from this language anything else than the de-stroyed." scent of the whole person of the Lord? We have, in the above portions of I think not. As I design brevity, I do God's word, presented for our connot think farther proof necessary on sideration one of the most grand, this point. To me it appears most sublime, soul-encouraging, and glounreasonable that we should be look-rious scenes that tongue can describe, ing for a spiritual coming of our Lord, when he is here already in that sense of his coming, for he spiritually dwells in his people. For, let it be remembered, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his." We shall next consider the manner of his coming, which is our second position. "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the or heart conceive. Not a heavenly messenger in the vast dominions of God but will be present with the Lord. Not a saint that has lived and died since Adam breathed the breath of life, but will be with the King, the Lord of hosts, in his resurrected and glorious body, fashioned like the glorious body of his Lord, to escort him to the new earth. Why |