SIN by the sacrifice of himself," was the object (Heb. ix. 26) for which the eternal Son assumed "the likeness of sinful flesh;" and shall not that object be fulfilled? The sentence against SIN, I repeat, has been long delayed, but the time will have come at length, and the Word of God must be verified in the entire extinction of SIN, ALL SIN, and every unredeemed person and thing that has been in any form or way tainted by it.

IV. In order to render the sentence and execution clear I now draw attention to the passage in Rev. xx. 11-15; and first of its arrangement. The Spirit of Truth in the Scriptures sometimes records a plenary action, and oft the collective entirety of the Divine purposes at the beginning of a passage, supplementing that aggregate afterwards by a statement of its components. Such is the case in Ephes. i. 3-7, where ver. 3 states the perfected condition of the children of God, attained to by the means afterward related in ver. 4-7. Heb. xii. 22-24 is another instance. Now ver. 11 of Rev. xx. does not only stand in the same relationship to ver. 3 of Ephes. i., it is the epitome of the closing judicial action of the millennial kingdom (§ III. 2): a compendium enfolding within itself the full details of ver. 12-15, with the resultant effect thereof, viz., the entire extinction, the "passing away" out of sight and of mind of the present earth, the gigantic graveyard of the world, and its firmament! That the language of ver. 11-15 is not figurative is plain enough-the earth and heavens have now a

place," but that "place is no more to be found;" and Isaiah says that they are now known, but the memory of their existence will be no more!

Again, is it not beyond question that the earth and the sea could not be giving up their dead after they had fled away? Thus the resurrection of "the rest of the dead" (Rev. xx. 5) seems to take place first; then the sentence of DEATH the second time, the "everlasting punishment" of "destruction from the presence of the Lord" then sitting on the Great White Throne (compare 2 Thess. i. 9 with Rev. xx. 11); and when the execution takes place by the consumption of the carcases in the lake of fire, then the whole fabric of this earth and its atmosphere vanishes by the power of the Word of God who brought it into existence.

V. In conclusion, I cannot help remarking that I have not used the word "annihilation," though I fail to see the nicety of distinction between the Scriptural expressions at the head of this paper and that word, of which there seems to be a needless fear. The wicked heathen in their end "SHALL BE AS THOUGH THEY HAD NOT BEEN!" (Obad. 16.) See also Psa. lviii. 7-11; xxxvii. 10. If these words do not express annihilation, I shall be glad to be supplied with a suitable word as an equivalent.

*The spirits, or principle of life, being taken back to God who gave them. (Eccles. xii.)

I am here reminded of a statement that "the last conflagration shall reduce this globe (?) to its original constituent elements, without destroying it." Quere What were the original constituent elements of the earth? Answer: Heb. xi. 3!

Wellington House, Clevedon.

It makes thy children sad to see
The wrongs they cannot right,
And ask how long wilt thou endure
The heaven-offending sight?

"How long, O Lord?" we need not ask,
For this is the reply,-

The times are in the hands of God,
Most Holy and Most High,

We run and rush, in foolish haste,
Through life's allotted span;
II. with divine tranquillity,
Evolves his perfect plan.

A thousand years, as mortals count,
With him are but a day;

His space is ample for his will
To have its blessed way.

Our need is patience; we must wait
The Lord's appointed hour;

He only knows the proper time

To exercise his power.

And when that comes, the Lord will come

To dry creation's tears,

And give his people peace and joy

Eternal as his years.

THE HEATHEN WORLD.

WAS the ancient heathen world really left in such utter darkness

as regards the knowledge of the one true God as we of this age are apt to suppose? I for one very much doubt it; I think that many proofs to the contrary may be given alike from Scripture, from reason, and from historic facts.

In the first place, then, we have numerous instances in the Scriptures of heathen monarchs, and of others,-both before and after the giving of the Law of Moses,-appealing and referring to Jehovah, as the one true God. In the Book of Genesis, for example, we read of God appearing to Abimelech, the King of Gerar, and the answer of Abimelech which is given Gen. xx. 4-6, from which it is clearly shown that Abimelech was not without knowledge of the truth, and yielded some obedience to Jehovah, the God of truth. We have, again, the instance of the children of Heth recognising Abraham as the servant of Jehovah, and respecting him on that account. Nay, in the above case of Abimelech we actually have this heathen monarch reproving, and that with justice and righteousness, the servant and prophet of Jehovah.

Above all, we have the very remarkable case of Melchizedek, King of Salem; who, as "priest of the Most High God," must have taught the inhabitants of Jerusalem,-who in those days were what we should call heathen,—and from whose instruction without doubt a marvellous amount of divine light must have shone on all the surrounding nations. And we have also the case of Job and his friends, all of whom were more or less acquainted with the true God.

In our Lord's own words, again, which gave such offence to the Jews,-"Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian," it is clearly implied that God's goodness and consequently a more or less right knowledge of him was to be found among the heathen nations. We have also the case of the prophet Balaam, who was not only a prophet of the Most High, but was recognised as such by many of the nations around.

We have also some extraordinary instances of a knowledge of Jehovah being possessed, in part at least, even by some of the heathen monarchs from whom we should least have expected it. Thus we find Necho, King of Egypt, warning Josiah not to come against him, for God had given him a command to go out and fight and to make haste, and (2 Chron. xxxv. 22) the remarkable statement is added: "Josiah hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God." So again, we find Cyrus, King of Persia, saying: "The Lord God of heaven.... hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem" (Ezra. i. 2). We find Hiram, King of Tyre, saying: "Blessed be the Lord, which hath given unto David a wise son" (1 Kings v. 7); and we also find the same

Hiram co-operating and gladly assisting to build the temple of Jehovah. We find the King of Nineveh repenting at the preaching of Jonah, and all the Ninevites recognising Jonah as a prophet of God." We find, after the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, "the captain of the guard" of that monarch-who was of course a heathen-saying: "The Lord thy God hath pronounced this evil upon this place. Now the Lord hath brought it, and done according as he hath said; because ye have sinned against the Lord, and have not obeyed his voice" (Jer. xl. 2, 3).

With regard to the Persian religion, Mr. Rawlinson remarks: "The main feature in the early state of this religion was the acknowledgment and worship of a single supreme God, -the Lord God of heaven (2 Chron. xxxvi. 23; Ezra i. 2). The spirit of the Zendavesta is wholly averse to idolatry, and we may fully accept the statement of Herodotus, that 'images of the gods were entirely unknown to the Persians.' It was during this time of comparative purity, when the anti-idolatrous spirit was in full force, that a religious sympathy seems to have drawn together the two nations of the Persians and the Jews. Cyrus evidently identified Jehovah with Ormazd,-note especially the phrase 'He is the God,' Ezra i. 2, 3. The foundation was thus laid for that friendly intimacy between the two peoples of which we have abundant evidence in the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther."

The wise men from the east who came to worship our Lord were Magi, who, we are told, had been warned by God in a dream.

We have thus many proofs that God was never so utterly unknown to his creatures as we are apt to imagine. But perhaps the greatest proof of all that he was not so, is afforded by the fact that everywhere and in all ages, men in times of distress appeal directly to God himself to help them; and in every mythology there have been found clear traces of an Almighty Being above and superior to all the "gods many" of such mythologies. Indeed the conviction that there is a God above, who has made us and sustains us, is one which nothing can long or wholly destroy; and I feel certain that in all the nations of old there existed such a belief. "In India at the present day, overrun as it appears to be with the grossest idolatries, the Hindu mind still retains the impress of a purer faith. It is a most note-worthy circumstance that as regards the Hindus their ever-growing polytheism has never been able to banish an impression of one supreme God. In India you hear the people speak of Ishmar (God) or Parera Ishmar (the great God), but you never hear them use these terms in the plural number."† In fact, look where we will, we find everywhere some knowledge, more or less pure, of the one true God; corrupted it may be and distorted, but still not entirely destroyed. I cannot but believe

Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies.
Gleig's "Great Problem," pp. 66.

that the institution of sacrifice, found as it has been in so many heathen nations, is a proof that they were acquainted through their fathers with the sacrifices originally offered to Jehovah. And I also think that the very name Jupiter, i.e., Zeus Pater, (or Zeus, the Father), which was the name in use among the Greeks and Romans, proves that a recollection of the fact that God was the Father of all men had not entirely been lost. I think that the words Jovis, Jove, &c.,-the genitive and other cases of the word Jupiter in use among the Romans,-point to a remembrance of the word Jehovah, the self-existent One.

Again, the hope of a Messiah to come; of some Great One who should deliver the groaning and troubled earth from its many evils, seems always to have been found in some form or other, and it seems most probable that this hope arose originally from the promise given to our first parents. The descendants of Noah must have carried with them into all the places where they went after the flood, the records and accounts of that catastrophe, and of the revelation of God to Noah.

In an able work recently published by Mr. Gleig, the following remarks are made on this deeply interesting point. After showing that there is much reason to believe that the early Vedic Hymns of India were probably inspired by the revelation originally made by the Deity, Mr. Gleig observes: "It is impossible for those who believe in a primitive revelation, who discover in the oldest of the Vedic Hymns the outpourings of devotion as deep and pure as in the Psalms of David,... it is impossible to suppose that throughout the unnumbered centuries which preceded the coming of Christ, the Spirit of God held no communion with the spirits of men, except within the narrow limits of one favoured nationality. On the contrary, every teacher of everlasting verities, every moral regenerator of the world, in whatever age he may have lived, in whatever land he may have laboured, deserves to be called an inspired man. Who can doubt that so far as each taught his disciples to worship the unseen God in their lives rather than with their lips, he obeyed the impulses of that Holy Spirit" who worketh hitherto and shall never cease to work?

How, for instance, is it, or has it ever been possible for Gentiles to "do by nature the things contained in the Law" unless they had some knowledge of the true God? How can any good thing exist unless it come from God? Whence come our emotions of pity, of tenderness and love, except from him who is the fountain of all these beautiful feelings, feelings which "bear witness with our spirit" that they are from the Spirit of God.

Moreover, St. Paul tells the Athenians that "God had never left himself without witness." The very 66 rain from heaven and fruitful seasons filling men's hearts with food and gladness," have ever been witnesses to the true God. At all events "his eternal power and Godhead" might be clearly known from Nature itself,