the eternal verities of God's Word and truth, and springs up into activity, he usually finds that he wakens up to darkness and perplexity, and often in more or less of alarm, with fright upon his spirit. "Oh, oh! What is it? Where am I now?" Why, the other night in Oakley Square I woke after midnight, and I heard pouring through the Square the rush of feet and the sound of voices. I sprang out of bed and went to the window, and there, just outside of the window, I saw the whole sky blazing with the reflected flame of a great fire, and people rushing from all parts for there are Londoners who never seem to go to bed. Let a fire blaze up at any time, and you will have a crowd of dressed men and women pouring to that sight. Well, ofttimes when a sinner first awakes, he awakes with the red, lurid glare coming in at his window; he awakens up-to put it in Old Testament fashion-with Sinai gleaming in upon his soul. That sight, "that blackness and darkness, and voice of the trumpet, and sound of words," that lightning and thunder, and there is no peace and no rest. A man is not comfortable when he wakens; he wakens with his face to Sinai, and there sweep through his soul these considerations: "God is holy, God is my Lawgiver; I have broken His laws. I was made by Him, and am accountable to Him, and my life has been a transgression, a trampling under foot of His commands, and of His grace and mercy." And nothing about him seems to give peace. It is like the glare of the midnight fire. If I waken up and discover that there is a fire, and that the fire is not in the next street, that it is not in the next house, but that it has fastened upon my own house, it keeps me from going back to bed and to sleep. I begin to make shift, to get out of the house; I am glad

God, his peace
He is awakened,
Now, my friend,

you are to put

to hear then about escapes, fire-engines, and ladders, and all that kind of thing. So when a sinner wakens up to know God, and the holiness of God, and the law, with its curse, to the thought of meeting with vanishes as a dream when one waketh. and he is up, and now what is he to do? if you are awakened, I don't say that yourself in a state of terror. Every one is not alarmed by a fire. Some, when a fire is in their house, are wonderfully cool, others are wonderfully excited; but all are making their way out. Now, whether cool or not, you are wanting peace, you are wanting rest, you are wanting salvation. You have wakened up to know that there is nothing around you but condemnation and destruction. Steady your nerve a minute, it is a critical state; you may take a wrong step now; and as you have obeyed the rest of the text, will you obey this: "Christ shall give thee light"? Stand just where you are now, don't take a step, wait a minute, wait for the firemen. The escape is already reared against the window, and the brave fellows are coming up; don't rush in a panic, don't go helter-skelter here and there, for there is blinding smoke, and there is confusion, with the possibility of your taking a wrong turning and doing something in a panic that you may never undo. Wait. Whenever a soul is awakened and aroused, then the Bible, that has been talking in thunder tones to you all along, suddenly changes, and brings in a new word, a new name that I never mentioned before, "Christ shall give thee light."

First of all, you are sleeping in the midst of your danger and distress; then, when you are awakened to it all," Christ shall give thee light." Do you ask, "Where is He?" He is beside you, He has come in; He is the brave fireman; He has come into your burning building, and has wanted to fill His arms with you. Will you let Him? It is like this. I think I have told you this illustration before; I will tell it

again, for it is true. In Edinburgh, one night—and if any of you know Edinburgh, you know the Register House, and you know the very high block of buildings behind the Register House-I think, in West Register Street yonder, just straight from the Post Office, there stands a very high, towering building. Some friends of mine lived in one of the "flats," as they are called. A fire broke out in the night—a raging, destroying, desolating fire. The people heard the noise, they heard the crackling, they heard the shouts, and they awakened the sleepers. They arose, though, alas, alas! they afterwards went wrong. They arose, they gathered themselves together, they came downstairs till they came to the passage, the entry, the " close," as they call it there, that leads out into the street. They were almost safe, but in that entry leading to the street they were met by a blinding rush of smoke, and, in the terror and alarm of the moment, instead of going straight out through the smoke, they turned into a door that was standing deceitfully open, a door into a chamber, and before they could recover from their mistake they were suffocated; they perished in the smoke.

This, if in that

What would have saved my friends? moment of panic and terror and confusion, by fire on the one hand and smoke on the other, and danger all round about, if there could have pierced through the blinding smoke one, only one, clear ray of God's daylight from outside, it would have met their eyes, it would have guided them out into the street, and to safety and peace. For want of light, they perished in the smoke and darkness. So need perish none who come to Christ. What my friends did not get, and for lack of which they were lost, is what you do get when you come to Christ. He is thy Light. Oh, awaken! Oh trembling, oh anxious soul, look to Jesus! and the more you turn away your eyes from Sinai to another hill, the moment you turn your eyes to Calvary, you will get peace. Look to Him, the Light on the cross. He is the Light that

calms my fears, that delivers me from all my guilt and condemnation. Look to Jesus.

"I once was a stranger to grace and to God,

I knew not the danger, and felt not the load;

Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree,
Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me."

Then you remember how he was aroused :—

"When free grace awoke me by light from on high,
Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety, no help could I see :
Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be."

Then he looked to the Saviour, you remember:
'My terrors all vanished before the sweet name,
My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came
To drink of the fountain, life-giving and free;
Jehovah Tsidkenu was all things to me."

So He is. Christ shall give thee light, light, light! Light to see by, light to walk by, light for all your path along the road; and light, you know, means everything here. Darkness means all that is fearful and gloomy and paralyzing; light means everything that is helpful and hopeful, and liberating and enriching. Come to Christ, and He shall give thee light; oh, come, trust Him! that is to say, let in the light of peace and pardon that streams from the crucified and gloried Saviour. Let Him shine on you, and let Him shine in you. ing of the eyes to let in the cheering, the guiding light.

Faith in Him is the opensaving light-the calming, the "I heard," says Dr. Horatius

Bonar, the sweet singer of Israel lately fallen asleep—

"I heard the voice of Jesus say,

'I am this dark world's light, Look unto me, thy morn shall rise And all thy day be bright.'

I looked to Jesus, and I found

In Him my star, my sun,

And in that light of life I'll walk

Till travelling days are done." Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, General Printers, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

THE SALVATION OF ZACCHEUS.

A Sermon

DELIVERED IN THE GREAT CENTRAL HALL,
HOLBORN, LONDON,

ON SABBATH AFTERNOON, MAY 4TH, 1890, BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

"For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." -LUKE XIX. 10.

THIS story of the salvation of Zacchæus on the roadside, by Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God in human flesh, in all His love and grace, is an illustration of the statement made in the tenth verse, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." Of the real and awful meaning of the word "lost," every man and woman born is the vivid, particular illustration. The lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost son or daughter, are illustrations on a lower level. But the awful reality and fact of "lostness" lies here I have lost God, and God has lost me. And the Gospel of the Gospel lies in that sentence, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

Now, says the narrative, here you see the Lord Jesus Christ at His work. How does He do it? Here is how He does it. Here is an illustration of the Son of Man at

No. 26.