The Time of the End

THE following Lectures on the World, the Visible Church, and the People of God, contain the substance of three Sermons preached in the Advent season of last year. They were written, and even committed to the press with the full expectation that our happy connexion would long remain unbroken. But it has pleased God to open before me another sphere of labour, which I have thought it right to undertake; and you must now receive this little volume as a parting memorial from one who can never cease to take the deepest interest in your welfare. 
I should have preferred leaving with you something more characteristic of the general tenour of my ministry; something containing fuller statements upon the grand saving doctrines of the Gospel, such as the completeness of the atonement, the present, free, and perfect justification of every poor sinner that believes in Jesus; and the new birth as wrought by the Holy Ghost in the soul, and invariably accompanied by the fruits of the Spirit in the life. These are the truths which I hope have filled my sermons, and which I pray God may be written indelibly by the Holy Ghost upon your hearts. 
But I trust the subject of this little volume may not be altogether ill-suited to our present circumstances, inasmuch as by directing us to the church’s dangers, it may lead us to pray for the church’s safety. If the view taken of St. Paul’s prophecy be correct, we live in times of peculiar peril, and must be prepared for a further increase of seduction and apostacy within the visible church. How earnest then should be the prayers of God’s people, in behalf of God’s ambassadors! He alone can make us able ministers of the New Testament; He alone can preserve us as faithful witnesses for Christ. I know well, brethren, that you have prayed habitually for me, and for that assurance I most heartily thank both God and you. And now I leave it with you as my earnest and solemn charge, that you will not relax those prayers, but increase and multiply them in behalf of him who is about to fill my place. Let his hands be strengthened by the believing intercessions of a faithful flock; let him go into your pulpit borne up by prayer. And may the God of all grace shower down both on you and him every rich blessing of his Spirit! May we hear the glad tidings of your undivided fellowship in the Gospel! And may an abundant answer be given to my unworthy though unceasing supplication, “that your hearts may be comforted, being knit together in love, unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ!”