them. Politics, as we daily know them, are an unbelief of the Lord as Lord. Man as man, sufficient to himself, is the ground of their doctrine; and as the Egyptian said of his river, "The river is mine own, I have made it for myself." It is a simple character to try them by, and it seems a sweeping judgment; but God judgeth all things in truth, and giveth a simple rule to judge by, and all that is not in Christ will be found not of Him. A false prophet is one not confessing Jesus, and their word is about the world independently of God, and the world gives them heed; these are they that speak by the spirit of antichrist. The apostle says many false prophets are gone out into the world. If any man knows the true extent of the call that God has made by the apostle, and by those who follow the truth he delivers, he listeneth not to such at all.

Now the spirits and prophets that speak by them are prophesied of; and because they do the reverse of what. true prophets do, they are false prophets, and they are spoken of as to appear in these latter times, when all things are hastening to the time of God's interference in the world by His judgments against the rebellious; and the spirit is called the spirit of antichrist, because it is set against the Lordship of Jesus over the world, and will fully exist in antichrist when he is manifested. Those that are of God overcome the seduction and turn away, because they have a spirit in them that is greater than the spirit that is in the false prophets. But let us not conceal from ourselves how plain the distinction is made by the Word of God between one spirit and the other. Nor let us think less of the grace of God to man in Christ, or to ourselves who believe, for Christ is made of God to us, "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption"; we are possessors of Christ, and own the Lord of whose glory we are partakers, but separate by a clear undeniable separateness from all the false prophets speak of. "Come out and be ye separate, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord God Almighty." Doing good to all men, and loving one another for God and for our hope's sake,

and our works will be owned of Him when He shall come, and they shall be judged for all "the hard speeches they have spoken against Him."

It is unbelief in us to have any thing to say to any of these matters. We return as the dog to his vomit when we do so. We must not be deceived by words of honour and of noble sentiments. When men do well to themselves, men will speak well of them, as is said in the forty-ninth Psalm. Your rule is, "Whom the Lord commendeth;" but for us they are condemned, though we confess ourselves always sinners saved by grace. The Lord cometh to judgment.

But if the spirit of anti-Christ is at work, the same will produce a FALSE PROPHET far above the rest. How wise is the arch enemy! Will he let the world see this all at once? None were ever wicked at once. No man ever gained his fellow-men by proposing a thing as evil, but as good; but you have here, in the description of the false prophets and their works, the sure marks of the beginning; and they lead surely to the end. Those we speak of speak of the world, and the world heareth them. Men, again, now perhaps dispute about religion, and about this or that being the right one. God says, "True religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is to keep yourself unspotted from the world;" and His commandments are to believe on the Son of God, and to love one another in this faith. Now, beloved, everything is slipping from its place. Everything that is not founded on Christ and His word, and to the exclusion of everything else, will soon be in the enemy's camp. Take with you a single eye, and your whole body shall be full of light; otherwise you will slip away into the dominion of evil, and at last of Satan. Do not be deceived by the name of religion. The weak, the crucified One, is the power of God unto salvation. It is a matter of faith and of holding fast. Disbelieve the false prophets. Believe God, and the devil will flee from thee, and thyself be left to the rejoicing of hope, and to you belong rest (with those that have from the first declared the salvation of God) when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven

with His mighty angels, and you, perfected by trial, because you hold fast; they who have troubled you, righteously receiving tribulation, and punished with everlasting destruction from that presence which is become your's in joy for evermore. Let us now be fain to pluck out of destruction those in whom we discover that God yet keeps a conscience to the Lord alive in their breasts.

This then is the present state of things, or one we shall see presently accomplished; but there will be a GREAT FALSE PROPHET. The power he will receive of Satan will be very great: his business will be to commend him to whom Satan will give his power and throne and great authority, by the permission of God; and the great false prophet will commend him to mankind by signs and wonders, and miracles, and fire from heaven, to cause men to obey him whom Satan has set up, as the glory and boast of man.

It is one fashion of the unbelief of the present day to deny the existence of Satan, the adversary. There can be no greater cause of any falling into his toils, because when miracles and wonders are now done they will be ascribed to God, and thus they will give credit to Satan and be deceived. But Scripture (and a sad woful sign of the power of Satan is it when the Scripture is kept from the hands of the people) is express on the subject, that as miracles were performed at the beginning of Christianity, that the miracles at the close of the dispensation will be from the Evil One, and not from God. Such then will have no eyes to discover the deceit, but wonder and worship. This false prophet will without doubt find his representatives, who by the same deceit will commend the same lie to those that are subject to them and not to God; and indeed, all those whose names are not written in the book of life through faith of the Son of God. And it is a sure word, that Christianity falls not into forgetfulness or into the ignorance of heathenism again, but is apostate from God in the fulness of human intelligence

and in hatred of Christ.

The false prophet will receive his doom with the great

king and power who is yet to be manifested, as we learn from the Apocalypse, chap. xix. 20, and other places of Scripture in the New and Old Testament. If you will compare this with chap. xiii. ver. 10, the description of his working miracles to deceive is the same as in chap. xix. 20. The false prophet in chap. xiii. 10, has the character of a worldly power; this he apparently loses, before he is finally destroyed. It is not said that the prophets mentioned in the text at the head of this tract do any miracles-their task is more ordinary: their character is, that they do not confess the coming of Christ as man, and they say, "Who is Lord over us?"—and they speak of the world, and may be, its religion too. But the time comes; the world, through hearing of them, is ripe in the deceivableness of unrighteousness to fall into the last snare of the enemy; and the great false prophet, and those who are connected with him, will bring men into the last measure of deception and rebellion against the Lord. The time is not afar off. The signs of the last times abound on every side. It is written, that in the last times false prophets shall come on the earth, and speak by the spirit of anti-Christ. And this is written to warn and quicken you who confess the Lord, that you be not also deceived.

D.

THE BRIDE. "And the Spirit and the Bride say Come. And let him that heareth say Come. And let him that is athirst come and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

May the present sweet sense, divinely taught, of our privilege as part of the Bride, espoused to Christ-keep our souls enjoying His love for Whom we wait. While some overlook and some discuss, may we enjoy the Church's bright place--surely fed by, and feeding on, the love of our absent Lord-The Lamb.

NÓ. IV.

HAGGAI, CHAPTER II.

any

I HAVE regarded this second, and indeed first chapter of Haggai, as deeply instructive, mainly as showing God's blessing and power towards a remnant. The work of building the house of the Lord was now begun. The word of the Lord had come to them before, reproving them, that though they could find time to dwell in their ceiled houses (verse 4), and did not suffer trifle or difficulty to interfere in the way of erecting them, yet if they met with any difficulty in endeavouring to raise the Lord's house, they immediately gave that up,-" The time was not come that the Lord's house should be built." Happily this reproof of the prophet had stirred up the minds of the people, they did begin to build; and immediately the word of the Lord came to them to encourage them:-"I am with you, saith the Lord." The building proceeds; and now, in this second chapter, the word of the Lord comes to speak with them concerning this building. It tells them the LORD had not despised "the day of small things." Man might, but God did not. "Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison as nothing?" But what then? "Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord. . . . And be strong, all ye people of the Lord, and work; for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts." For he

adds,

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According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my Spirit remaineth among you; fear not.' ye And if the Spirit remained among them, was not that all they needed? Is He not the Author of all power, of all wisdom, of all grace? Moving on the face of the waters at the beginning for creation; the Author of all power in judges or in prophets. And if that was true in its sense (for the