‹ Oh, It goes becoming an agnostic, is out of the question. A man comes and says to me, "Mr. McNeill, it is a very serious time. So-and-so has written a book denying the miraculous.” "Oh!" "And another man has written a book casting doubt upon the authenticity of the four Gospels." indeed!" Somehow the thing does not bite. "like water off a duck's back." These books are too late, somehow or another. These men started too late for you. You cannot take an interest in them. The man might as well begin and say, "Mr. McNeill, there is a man who tells me that there is some doubt about whether you have been born." Well, I might meet that man's argument—and you would hardly find fault with me if I so met it with a kind but broad grin on my face. It is too late. We have bowed at the feet of the Son of God. We have discovered the Secret of the universe. We have reached the throne of the Highest. We have got something of the blaze of light that shines from the very throne of God; and we can never, never go back to doubt, and unbelief, and darkness again. It is warp and woof with us. It is in blood, and bone, and brain, and nerve, and sinew. thinking. If you find us casting doubts on Christ, shut us up in a madhouse, for we have gone out of our minds. Poor creatures, we are demented and deranged-it is disease that has overtaken us-if ever you find us going back upon this. It is the bottom of all our Now, my friend, I put that question to you before I let "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" I am you go: not asking about your doubts and difficulties, I push past all that, and it is time I did. Dost thou believe? You are of age, and it is time that you should answer that question This man said, "Who is He, Lord, that I might believe? And Jesus said, You have both seen Him, and He is talking -----AUST” p Henderson & Spalding, Printers, 3 & 5, Marylebone Lane, London, W. THE ANGEL-SLUMMERS. A Sermon PREACHED IN REGENT SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 25TH, 1891, BY THE REV. JOHN MCNEILL. TEXT-Genesis xix. 15. SOME time ago we read that " slumming" had become fashionable, because some great folks had gone down into the East End to see its misery for themselves. That is, however, a very late date at which to put the "fashionableness" of slumming. Here are angel-slummers millenniums ago; forerunners also of the Great Slummer, the Lord Jesus Christ; faint shadows flung out of heaven and appearing on the earth; adumbrations of Him who was coming to seek and to save the lost. It should help us to look into this narrative, and from these angels learn something of how we ought to rescue the perishing; for our circumstances, after all, are not so dissimilar. Sodom and Gomorrah were the wickedest cities that ever appeared-until London and Paris, New Vol. III.-No. 12. at York and San Francisco came up. I verily believe all the abominations that ever were in Sodom are in our own city at this moment. And I am not a croaker, and you are not to call me a croaker. If you call me croaker, I may turn round and call you cuckoo, sitting on a tree, chirping away your little song, trying to make out that this is the best of all possible worlds. It is all pleasant, all a sweet April morning-so you think. I am neither an optimist, in the ordinary sense, nor a pessimist. There is a very bright light shining, but there is also a very deep and dense darkEven the New Testament does nothing to relieve the blackness; it only makes it blacker. Certainly there is a kind of sin, there is an abomination to-day in London-it may be in your own heart, my hearer-that was not found among the vileness of Sodom; I mean the rejection of the Son of God. A deeper darkness lies across the land to-day than even then, and a deeper doom impends: "the Lord shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, to take vengeance on them . . . . that obey not the Gospel of His Son." Then how we ought to work! ness. "When the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife." The angels. Well, if angels left their heavenly seats to come to such a work, I think some of us might be beginning to touch it with a long stick by this time. I think it might be a little more your own concern, my hearer-your own affair. If you will allow me to put it that way, it might be still more fashionable than it is. Some of us dearly love to watch great people; and if great people will turn slummers, we will follow them. If the gentry for we dearly love the gentry, they are our mark, our way, and our end-if they take an interest in philanthropic movements, in alleviating distress, we will go with them. Here is our mark! This work is carried on under the auspices not only of angels, but of the Lord of angels and of men. The Gospel heightens and deepens the impression as we watch these heavenly visitors. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Oh, how strong ought to be the urgency and pressure upon us! How, by every consideration, we ought to be moved out of selfishness and of indifference, and out of relegating the work to others, to putting our own hand to, if we possibly can. There is no doubt about the sin, if we believe what our eyes see. Even if we turn away from God's Book, the newspapers shall convince us and sadden us. The printed page in the morning almost makes us afraid to let our morning paper lie, lest our children should lift it. There is no getting rid of or minimizing our sin: the gilded sin, the ungilded sin; the secret sin, and the raging open sin; the natural, and the unnatural; the ordinary, and the "superfluity of naughtiness." And there is no minimizing or getting rid of the doom. We believe in God, and we believe in God's Word; in Christ, and in His Cross. Therefore we believe at once in the doom of sin, and in the way of escape for sinners. "The damnation slumbereth not." "The Judge is at the door." "From henceforth the time is shortened." Then how we ought to be up and doing, we |