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its Christlessness, its doom? "What!" says Lot, “you don't mean to say God will consume me-me, Abraham's nephew? Would God actually rain fire and brimstone on a gentleman like me?" Don't smile; some of you think He won't. "Unless ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." "Lest thou be consumed." "What! I—I, with a godly father and praying mother; and coming up and up through Sunday-school and Bible-class-me? Yes, thou. Remember Lot's wife; the wife of a godly man, related to some of the truly exalted of the earth, and she looked back and became a pillar of salt. The heart within her belonged to Sodom. Her religion was only an external thing; her doom was just.

"Lest thou be consumed." Where can I get my eye to fasten upon a grey head? "Lest thou be consumed." Can I get my eye to fall upon some fair youth, bright, and burning, and eager. In London here, clever, astute, growing in years and growing in worldly wisdom, aye, and growing too in amiability, growing too in culture of mind, growing in manly strength-"Escape thou, lest thou be consumed." Can I make it plainer that your preacher believes in a real heaven, and an awful destruction, with just time to flee? Flee from the wrath that is coming, to the mercy that has come before the wrath. The storm is coming, but the ark is here before it. The doom slumbers not; but the open door of escape turns on its hinges here to receive you.

And then just a closing word. It is not only "thou," but I am thinking of all your belongings-your wife, your son,

your daughter, your daughter-in-law, your son-in-law. The angels under God's authority mentioned them all, for this God of ours wants to save us all, all our kith and kin, nearer or more remote. Not a hoof need be left behind; thou and thy wife, and thy son's wife, they can all go into the ark; it is a family boat, it is a house-boat, there is room, blessed be God, for us all. Come, husband; come, wife ; come, father; come, mother; come, brother; come, sister; come, you to whom we have got related by marriage," the wife's folk"; my husband's folk, come. By means of these marriage ties God is wanting to cast the grappling irons of grace on vessels that otherwise would sweep to the reef of destruction.

God grant that something has been said to rouse workers to do better work, and to rouse those who need to be saved to use all diligence in putting all the space that is needful between them and destruction. And here is all that is needed. "He that believeth shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, Printers, 3 & 5, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM.

A Sermon

PREACHED IN EXETER HALL, ON JANUARY 11TH, 1891.

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

TEXT-"And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."-Ruth i. 16.

THE strongest thought, the leading idea, the practical idea in my mind in connection with this text, is simply this, that what you have here working between Ruth and Naomi is an element between the soul of man and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to state this idea, and, as the Lord the Spirit shall help me, to work round about it, and to bring it home, and to make a nail of it, so to speak, and, by repeated blows, to drive it in. I take it, therefore, for illustration and application in that direction. I say that what you have here is a true, valid, unmistakable element in religion -this warm, loving, melting, unspeakable tenderness-this whole hearted, irrevocable decision in an hour or a moment of crisis.

Vol. III.-No. 13.

You remember how Ruth came to this crisis in her life's

history. Some ten years before this, old Naomi had gone away from Israel into the country of Moab. Some time afterwards her husband died. She had two sons, and they had married two women of Moab. The sons also died, and now Naomi, older, lonelier, more hopeless and helpless and heartless than ever, rises up to wend her weary way back to her own country. She had been driven out by famine years before. She now hears that the Lord has visited His people, and that where there used to be famine there is abundance; so she comes back again, poor old body, like a shuttle tossed here and there. Is she not like some of ourselves-tossed here and there like a cork on the stream, seemingly the very sport of adverse winds and waves and circumstances? "I came out full," she said; "I go back empty.". She is poured out from vessel to vessel, with no abiding rest, and, seemingly, with no prosperity in her life. And when she starts to take the long journey home again to Bethlehem, her own land, her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, themselves widowed and bereaved, go naturally a bit of the road along with her. We ourselves remember a time when we started out to go on some distant journey, and some loving friend or two accompanied us; but of course there came the exact point in time and place when the convoy came to an end. We turn round and face each other. We have been talking, and talking, and trying to be cheery, while our heart was very sad; and, at last, in a certain point in the road, we pull up, and our friends say, "There is no use in our going any farther."

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