them to their accountability. For he said to Jerusalem, "How often would I have gathered thy children together." It was no other than He who had sought through so many centuries, and by the ministry of so many a prophet and priest, to unite them in his covenant. It was He who had, like a shepherd, ruled them, and fed them, and kept them. And now that He was a shepherd lisowned, a ruler repudiated, he talked of consequences in the Old Testament style of offended goodness and dishonored soverignty: "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!" He ould come without much delay for the righteous judgment of e nation rejecting him. 3. We may, again, discover in our Lord's anger, a foreshadowg of the wrath that will overwhelm the wicked in the great dav final justice. There is a time for every purpose. There was atime, "that › kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared;" en "according to his mercy he saved us;" when he "sent not Son into the world to condemn the world;" when the motive pity, and the mission one of mercy. There is a time for this to be proclaimed, and for the church to fulfill her mission in ying through the world the offer of this salvation. There is a of privilege for all sinners "A day of grace, when mortals may ere is also a day appointed of God, when he will "judge the in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained." when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of his glory udicial character-when he shall appear for the express purof judgment-he has fully authorized the expectation that tice toward the wicked will be manifested in great severity. ording to his own account of the scene, he will say to those is left hand, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." Other d representations of the scene give us pictures of dismay, or, of wailing, of tribulation and anguish, unequaled by any escription ever written. We have all the terrible imagery ttle-field on which God is the conqueror, and from which mies, routed, scattered, hopeless, fly in all directions in of sheltering hills, which are nowhere to be found, to hide om his face. It is to be the great day of his wrath, when will be heard: Who is able to stand? The descriptions have of the joys and triumphs of the redeemed; of the brightness, and bliss of heaven; of Messiah's grand entry kingdom, with banner, and song, and thanksgiving-criptions are not more vivid and glorious, than those of hrow and despair of the unbelieving are vivid and awful. thing surpass that image of a wine-press, in which the wicked are the grapes trodden upon in all the "fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God?" But he who treads the wine-press is the once meek and merciful Jesus. Does it seem to you impossible that so mild a nature can exhibit itself in such severity? Bear the fact in mind, that mild natures, allied to the interests of justice, never fail to be severe êxecutioners when their patience has been carried to the extreme that the case admits, and the sentiment of justice awakes to action. As their very forbearance serves to swell the wrong that is done on the other side, and to inculpate the offender as one who has not only offended against duty, but has continued to offend against mercy that forbearance must in the end evoke a more aggravated punishment. Bear it also in mind, that men are guilty of the evil they cause in others, and that a train of pernicious influence runs on from every unsanctified life across the future; so that the evil, not only which every sinner has done, but all the mischiefs in the moral system which have been the result of his example, from the time of his death to the day of judgment, will come in to stir the indignation of a Saviour who has worked against that evil, and has sought to prevent it by his very tears and blood. With these facts in mind; and considering how the holiness of the Redeemer flashed out at times, in anger, during his life of love and sorrow; we shall not be tempted to discredit any of the representations the Bible gives of his overwhelming indignation in the last awful day. 4. And so I find in my subject a motive, which I may use with you in this day of his goodness, to constrain you to flee to him for refuge. It has been with the design to save men, that he has revealed so much as he has of the holy anger excited in him by the sins of men. With the same benevolent design do his ministers exhibit to you the just and severe, as well as the merciful and sympathetic, side of his character. You can not know him too well. You must know him as he is-JUST, and HAVING SALVATION to be made savingly wise. "Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men." We fully believe there is "wrath to come;" and that it will burst, even from the Saviour's tender breast, in a flame that will be to all who obey not the gospel, a fire consuming and unquenchable. There is now forgiveness with him. Now "the vilest sinner may return." The arms of love, the doors of hope, the negotiations of peace, are open. Should any of you fail to come in through the open doors, and to find rest and peace in his extended arms, you will in a coming day be angry with yourselves. Your indignation, as well as his, will be provoked. Can one forgive his own mistakes, amid such teachings relative to the wisdom of life as we have from the great Prophet of mankind? Can one fail to reproach his own folly, who has never learned enough in life to know how the goodness of God leadeth to repentance," and on whose worldly mind through life a Saviour's love has made no effectual impression? If we would not come under this selfreproach, and under the just anger of a God forsaken, and a Saviour unaccepted, let our hearts to-day be open to the truth that may enlighten, to the love that will forgive. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all! SERMON XX. BY REV. A. HUNTINGTON HUNTINGTON CLAPP, PASTOR OF THE BENEFICENT CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. THE DEFECTION OF DEMAS. "DEMAS hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica."-2 TIMOTHY 4: 10 (part). IN only two other passages of Scripture, and they briefer even than this, do we find mention of Demas. Yet enough is said to give us a key to his character; and he seems better known, and is oftener referred to by way of warning in the writings and speeches of Christian men, than are many whose lives we have more in detail. Each reader combines, with these brief hints, such knowledge as he may have of the times, places, circumstances, in which Demas lived, and so forms for himself some biography of the man. Let us take openly and avowedly the cause which so many have half-consciously pursued, with the expressed and implied facts concerning Demas, and see what lessons his life and character furnish for our instruction. This, the more recent histories of the life and times of the apostles give us every facility for doing.* The first that we hear of him is in Paul's Epistle to the Colossians and that to Philemon, both written during the apostle's first imprisonment at Rome, probably in the year of our Lord sixty two. In each of these letters, Paul sends Christian salutations from Demas, as among the personal friends who were faithful and serviceable to him in his imprisonment. He is named in the fraternal bond with Mark, Luke the beloved physician, and others whom the apostle takes manifest pleasure in commending as his fellow-laborers, his fellow-helpers in the truth. We do not won *See, especially, CONYBARE and Howson's Life and Epistles of Paul. Their chronology has been mainly followed in this discourse. der at Paul's affectionateness of esteem, at a time when friends were few and sorely needed, not merely for his own comfort, for that which lay far nearer to his heart-the advanceme Christ's infant church. A year after writing these salutations, and after two prisonment at Rome-an imprisonment, however, whi prevent such writing and preaching as a man ma arm chained to that of a military guard; writing ar effectual, too, as to make converts even in the impe is acquitted of the false charges urged against b donia, thence to the province of Asia; thence, returns to Ephesus and Nicopolis; writes his first to Timothy and that to Titus; and in the spring of the eight is again in a Roman prison. But he is not now, as in comparative comfort, permitted to see his friends in his hire apartments, and to preach Christ crucified to all who would hear. He is in closest confinement, under imperial guard; if tradition speaks truly, shut in that dark, damp, rock-hewn cell-the Mamertine prison. In the power of his own and his Lord's enemies, practically learning the change for the worse which six years more of despotic power and lust have wrought in Nero's savage heart, he yet finds means to write this last and most touching of all his letters--the second to Timothy. Even amid the raptures of joyful assurance that he shall soon see his Lord, and wear the martyr's crown which he knows is laid up for him, the apostle, forsaken of all his summer friends, longs to see once more his dearly beloved son in the faith, that his own spirit may be cheered by the steadfast courage of his young successor, and that he may personally communicate his last instructions to one on whom such weighty responsibilities have come and are soon to press still more heavily. Under these circumstances it is, that we hear again of Demas. "Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me," Paul says to Timothy, "for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica." He adds: "Crescens has gone to Galatia; Titus, unto Dalmatia; only Luke is with me." Crescens and Titus had gone, no doubt, in the service of the church, bearing messages for Paul and fulfilling missions from which he was personally debarred. But not so with Demas. We are not left even to hope that his errand to Thessalonica may have been for the edification of the church in that city, as Timothy had once been sent there by Paul, "to establish them and to comfort them concerning their faith." He says expressly, "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this sent world." And here is one of the chief lessons for us that this account of teaches. love of this present world-what evil it has wrought, is till! The love of this present world-not only keeping many a soul from of life, is t It would cific-as we have he fortunes of this enthusiast, so soon to die, and to leave me alone, friendless and fe anew, and counted by my friends as we are not told, and c I may as well go back to erty, and with that help this causehelp it far more effectually than I her-having loved this present nas. He escaped the "mortififor the truth of Christ, and doubtless avoided the suf"est, that made up the exhe made a fortune, and he lost, we shall know It will do us no harm-if we be suppositions to suppose some of the a.. principle may have assumed in his case-as fatally in others. rld, in the mind of ATION. an, in his way. ificant names, Possi It may have been, THE DESIRE OF WEALTH, with comforts. nces. וי e, meaning Possibly of popuhome, ul as מי Thus, we know, it led away many of Christ's hearers. had read, and heard in the synagogues, of the Messiah's glor coming and kingdom, and had learned from the prevalent of the times, to regard it as the restoration of the temporal do Iminion to Israel-the making "her children princes in all the earth"-princes, not in David's sublime spiritual meaning, but in the low, secular import of the term consonant with their material views of God's word and plan. When they learned the actual truth of the matter, they were wanting. You remember Christ's rebuke to a company of this sort: "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles"-proofs of my divine character and mission-"but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled. Labor not for the meat which perisheth; but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you." A very different gift from that which they were seeking! And when that enthusiast came to him with the voluntary offer: "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest," how suddenly his ardor cooled at our Saviour's words: "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." Christ's doctrine of self-denial in the use of property-requiring that it be largely devoted to the good of others, and not to selfgratification was every where one of the most repellent features of his system, driving away many of his nominal adherents. So |