we were hearing thee upon our death-bed, at the approach of our last hour, at the dawn of the day of Christ!

Lord, Lord Jesus! that art "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," do thou therefore speak to all these thy people; enable us plainly to declare to them" the word of God, as of God, in the sight of God, and in Christ;" be with us, and put into our souls, as well as on our lips, the simplicity of a heart devoted to thy love, which seeks after Thee, and seeks Thee only! Amen.

When our Lord uttered the solemn declaration which is now to form the subject of our meditations, he was surrounded by a great multitude," insomuch," says the Evangelist, "that they trode one upon another." He had been addressing to them the most earnest exhortations to watch over the condition of their souls before God, while there was yet time, while it was yet day. "Let your loins be girded about," said he to them, " and your

lamps burning; and ye yourselves like unto

men that wait for their Lord, that they may open unto him immediately.-Ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth: but how is it that ye do not discern this time?-When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite." That is to say: Oh, immortal souls, why discern ye not the time of the patient waiting and invitation of a Redeeming God? You have an 'adversary;' and that adversary is the God whom you have so deeply offended: you are in the way' to the judgment-seat of Christ; and

that way is your brief existence: Whilst, then,

you are yet in the way, 'give diligence that you may be delivered from him,' lest you arrive 'before the Judge' eternal, without surety, without remission of sins, without reconcilement, without a Saviour."

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"THERE WERE PRESENT AT THAT SEASON," our text relates, SOME THAT TOLD HIM OF THE GALILEANS, WHOSE BLOOD PILATE HAD MINGLED WITH THEIR SACRIFICES;"-either with the intention of confirming the great lesson, which they had just heard from their Lord, by adducing to him the fatal example of those unhappy persons, thus brought before their judge at the moment when, doubtless, they imagined that the way of life was to be lengthened out a long time yet for them;-or else, wholly preoccupied with an event which had lately excited in Jerusalem universal indignation, they were desirous of ascertaining what sentence the Lord had passed upon these Galileans, and upon the odious governor, who, for five years, had made Judea groan beneath the weight of his extortions and his cruelties.

We can only form conjectures respecting the motive, which could induce Pilate thus to profane the public worship, and the holy places consecrated to religion, by a murder, which, moreover, but too closely resembles some

other acts of his authority previously known. Haughty, always in arms, and ambitious of independence, the Galileans lived under the dominion of Herod Antipas, and were but indirectly subject to the Roman authority; but at the yearly return of the solemnities of the Passover and of Pentecost, they assembled together by thousands at Jerusalem, in order to join the rest of the Jews, who, from the extremity of the East, and out of every province of the empire, came there to the celebration of those festivals. It is therefore very possible, that those here spoken of had provoked the rage of Pilate by the use of some rash and seditious expressions. Less than this, however, would have sufficed to urge on to the most cruel excesses this fierce and zealous soldier, who hated both them and their king; and who was always ready enough at shedding blood.

Alas, there is the blood of ANOTHER, which, at the last day, will cry out yet louder against this iniquitous and cruel ruler.-The year following was to obtain for Pontius Pilate the fatal distinction of an immortal infamy. At the

F

next Passover he was to deliver up to death the Prince of Life, in spite of the voice of his conscience and the warnings of heaven; and, thus consummating the great sacrifice, which, during fifteen hundred years, the Passover had prefigured, to destroy the Temple of God in the person of the Messiah, and to shed the blood of the everlasting covenant.

In the mean time, another catastrophe, less tragic but not less fatal, had just furnished Jerusalem with yet a new lesson upon the necessity of calling herself, without delay, to an account for the things done in her.

The brook of Siloë, to the south-east of Jerusalem, ran out of the hill of Sion, at the termination of the deep valley which separated the city of David from the mountain of Acra, upon which the lower town was built. The waters of this spring, which, according to St. Jerome, was the only one whence Jerusalem could be supplied, after escaping from the city, ran along for some distance by its walls, and thence crossing some pleasant gardens and groves, poured their limpid waves