all heathen." And Zephaniah, "Hold thy peace at the presence of the LORD GOD; for the Day of the LORD is at hand." And again: -"The great Day of the LORD is near, it is near; and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the Day of the Lord "."... You see, this language is the established language of the Prophets from the beginning. It is the invariable language in which they refer to the same great subject. Ever since the Fall, the Second Advent of CHRIST has ever been the one great event for which the whole Human race has been looking: and all, as many as GOD hath ever sent to be watchmen to the House of Israel, He hath instructed to herald His approach in the same unvarying formula,-"The LORD is at hand!"

If we were desirous to explain this matter in fewest words, we should borrow a few expressions from S. Peter's Second Epistle: "But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The LORD is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but

b Is. xiii. 6. Ez. xxx. 3. Joel i. 15: ii. 1. Obad. ver. 15. Zeph. i. 7, 14.

that all should come to repentance. But the Day of the LORD will come as a thief in the night."

To conclude. If after all it should appear to any a strange thing that the HOLY SPIRIT should have told of the coming of the Day of the LORD, the Second Advent of CHRIST, in language which, in its usual acceptation, would seem to relate to a period very near at hand, although two thousand years had yet to run; (and GOD only knows how many ages more will elapse before the actual occurrence of the event;) we do not in the least wish to deny that it is strange. We delight in such strangeness, rather than desire to explain it away, or to obliterate one feature of its singularity. We prefer to dismiss the subject by remarking that there is generally something mysterious and unexpected in the notes of Time which are found in the utterances of the SON and of the HOLY GHOST. The time, times, and half a time;' the days' and 'weeks,' of Daniel: S. John's 'hours' S. Matthew's immediately after the tribulation of those days:' S. Luke's 'fifteenth year of Tiberius:' the rising after three days :' the promise that certain bystanders 'should not taste of death till they saw the Son of Man

coming in His Kingdom: the three and a half days, the 1260 days, the 42 months, the very half hour's silence in Heaven, told of in the Apocalypse-all of these are more or less perplexing. They create, rather than remove difficulties.

And yet after all, the simplest humblest faith is ever the wisest and the best. The LORD must be at hand, because the LORD Himself hath said it! The Day of CHRIST must be near, because the HOLY GHOST hath proclaimed it by the mouth of all His holy Prophets since the world began. He, at the end of the days,―he will find himself in the right, who has believed in the nearness of the Second Advent: who has accepted the message in the letter of it: who has lived and died in a constant apprehension that "behold, the Judge standeth before the door."

Second Sunday in Advent.

PRECIOUSNESS OF THE BIBLE.

ROMANS iii. 1, 2.

What advantage then hath the Jew?... Much every way chiefly because that unto them were committed the Oracles of God.

No one has ever doubted what S. Paul means by these words. He speaks of the Old Testament Scriptures. And what he says concerning them certainly conveys an extraordinary notion of their value and importance. To have been the authorized keeper of them, he accounts to be the very chiefest glory of the Jewish nation. He had been disparaging the claims of the Circumcision. "He is a Jew" (he says) "which is one inwardly and Circumcision is that of the heart." "What advantage then hath the Jew?" (he breaks off to inquire, in his usual quick manner,) "or what profit is there of Circumcision? Much every way: chiefly because that unto them were committed the Oracles of GOD."

C

In other words, the prime glory and boast of the Hebrew nation was this,-that they had been selected by GoD out of all the nations of the earth to be the witness and keeper of Holy Writ. The Jews had been entrusted with the Oracles of GOD. That was their chiefest privilege! Therein lay their true blessedness! Their pre-eminence consisted in that!

The Collect for to-day is a very remarkable one. It regards the written deposit, and is in fact none other than a prayer for a blessing on its use. Composed (by Archbishop Cranmer probably) in 1549, when the first English Prayer-book was put forth, and constructed, studiously as well as most skilfully, out of the Epistle for the Day, (which was also the ancient Epistle,) it has superseded an ancient Collect of quite a different tenor, and altogether inferior to it. But what specially occasioned its introduction, I make no doubt, was the newly recovered use of Scripture. It is a plain fact, that the Romish branch of the Church Catholic keeps the Scriptures from the people. Our forefathers, previous to the Reformation, knew little of the English Bible. Slow instalments had been made: but it was not till 1549 that one lesson from the Old Testament and another from the New were'