know how we can do the least thing, or speak the least word for Him. No service is so blessed as His service. How different from the service of the world, or of the Wicked One, which ends only in our own destruction. How joyful to hear from the lips of Jesus those words "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make the ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." The joy of our Lord—who can express or even think what that will be? Will it not make all our service joyful now to think of having a share in the joy of our Lord? It is a wonderful honour to be permitted to serve Him here, much more to be permitted to share in His joy.

And, oh! how much happier every day will be, when you feel that you are serving such a Master-serving Him who loves you, Him who died for you. Then, instead of saying in your heart, "My Lord delayeth his coming," you will be " loving His appearing," loving to hear of it, rejoicing to think that it is near-seeking above all things to be ready for it, and to have those who belong to you ready for it also, knowing that it shall be in a moment, suddenly; but that it shall be to the faithful servant the end of all sorrow and the entrance into unspeakable joy.

SCRIPTURE LESSONS.

X.

The Coming of the Son of Man.

LUKE XVII. 26, 27.- "And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark; and the flood came, and destroyed them all."

"As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of man ;" or, as St. Matthew says, (chap. xxiv. 37), " so shall the coming of the Son of man be.” When that same Jesus whom the disciples saw go into heaven, shall so come again, as they had seen him go, then He shall find the world in such a condition as in the days of Noah. What is that condition? Shall they be waiting for him? Shall they be loving his appearing? Shall they like those first disciples who watched him going away from them,

have no such joy as to know that He is coming again? Nothing of all this is told us; but it is said, it shall be as in the days of Noah, when "they dideat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and the flood came, and destroyed them all." This is a terrible picture, and as it is given to us by our blessed Lord as a warning, we must think about it, and examine into it.

Did the flood, then, come so suddenly upon men, in the midst of their eating and drinking, and merry-making, without any warning being given to them by God? Let us look to the history in the Old Testament, which we find in Gen. vi. It is said, (ver. 5-9), “ God saw that the wickedness of man was very great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually..... And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth..... But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." Here, then, was a world full of wickedness, terrible wickedness, and God about to bring down a terrible judgment upon it; but among all those very wicked men, He does not overlook or forget this one righteous man, who is walking with Him and in His ways, while all the rest had become corrupt before Him. He will

never overlook or forget those who are found faithful to him. And let us observe how He deals with Noah, and how He preserves him from the destruction which He is going to bring on the ungodly. He tells him (ver. 11) beforehand of the flood He is about to send on the earth, and directs him to make the ark, a great wooden vessel, in which he and his family were to be saved. Noah had no reason to believe that the flood would come, except that God had said it. There was nothing to make it likely. The people about him were going on as before, quite at ease, eating and drinking, and making merry; and here was he, building his great ship on dry ground, far away from the sea, and they probably mocking him ; as day by day they saw no sign of the judgment that he was always warning them of; for we know he did warn them. It is said, in 2 Peter ii. 5, "God spared not the old world, but saved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly ;" and in 1 Peter iii. 20, we are told that "the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing."

Now let us look at that old world a little, and think of it as it was just then, as we know that at the coming of the Son of man, we are to see such a time again. The world quite busy, eating, drinking, marrying, enjoying itself without fear,

and without one thought of God, of Him who, high above out of their sight, is patiently waiting in His long-suffering, but never for a moment forgetting, or ceasing to mark their evil ways; never forgetting the hour that He has appointed when the flood shall come, and sweep them all away. And there is Noah, the one faithful preacher of righteousness, still calling them to repentance, if they would only hear. Oh! how sorrowfully must He have seen them turning a deaf ear to all his reproofs, and hurrying on to their terrible doom!

And there is the ark, nearly finished perhaps -that great unwieldy vessel which men are wondering at or laughing at. But still there is no cloud upon the sky, no appearance of a flood, not the least prospect of danger. The merriment goes on; men go on in their corrupt way. At length there comes a day when the sound of hammers and workmen are heard about the ark no more. It is finished, and all who belong to Noah have entered it, and God has shut them in. Perhaps men have not even noticed it, it is such a small matter in their eyes They are busy with other things than that. They little know that the only refuge from the coming danger is now shut. The preacher who has warned them so often will warn them no more. And now at last they see the windows of heaven.