Morning-Cloud Conversions-False Benevolence Prepare the Way of the Lord-Essential Truths - Dangerous Elation- Spiritual Pride Unhappy Consequences - Pioneer Truths- Repent and Believe Scriptural Repentance- Great Duty of Consideration-Resisting the Light of God - Surrender to God -the True Discipleship - Celestial Ladder - Dangerous San- guinity Relationship of Truth-Essential Distinction-Mourn- ful Delusion- Danger of Self-Righteousness Subverting the Grace of God-First and Last Foundation-Deliverance from THE UNVEILING OF THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. WHAT is the EVERLASTING GOSPEL? It is the perfect unveiling, to this world, of the mind and heart of God; with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What is it, but the divinely authorised proclamation of a compassionate love, which burns with equal intensity from age to age from everlasting to everlasting ;-a love which was manifested, and can only be measured, by the infinite gift and propitiatory sufferings of the Son of God? It is the only mirror in which B 14 THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL. the intelligent creation can fully behold the Divine glory-the entire harmonized character and mind of their Creator. Hence all orders of intelligent beings, are represented in Scripture, as simultaneously surrounding the "throne of God and the Lamb," to behold, through the medium of the Gospel, the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. While, on earth, no man ever yet looked into that perfect mirror with a willingness to do Christ's willwithout beholding the analyzed glory of the Lord in relation to his own everlasting happiness; and becoming thereby changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Thus it is emphatically termed the everlasting Gospel,-being essentially the same memorial of God throughout all ages, and under every successive dispensation. It has never lost any of its original meaning-any of its ancient power, when clearly apprehended, to sanctify, to gladden,-to save. In the patriarchal age, it appeared in its blissful dawnings; in the apostolic, it was revealed in its meridian fulness ;-but in all its degrees of manifestation, whether comparatively dim and obscure, or bright and effulgent, it was the THE DARKENING OF THE GOSPEL. 15 grand reflection of one eternal "Sun of Righteousness;" and, therefore, like its Author, the "same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." But how often, and how long, has this mirror been systematically dimmed or darkened by the devices or corruptions of man,—so as to present, at best, a distorted image of God,-far, very far, from the countenance of Him, who is "the brightness of the Father's glory, the express image of his person"! Who can deny that, since the days of the Apostles, whose office was to keep its perfectly-polished surface pure and unsullied, this glorious record was for many ages almost universally obscured or corrupted in its general exhibitions to the world, -if not buried under a mass of error and superstition, while multitudes of undying spirits "perished for lack of knowledge," and entered eternity unspeakably less prepared to meet God than on the day of their birth. But for this "falling away first," from the Gospel, in the professing Christian Church, the "Man of Sin" never could possibly have been revealed, or his system of iniquity established. (2 Thess. ii. 3.) For where "the truth, as it is in Jesus," is continually seen in its beauty and simplicity,-there the Spirit of 16 THE DARK AGES. God in the souls of the believers-continually resists the encroachments of vital error, even in its refinements, and defies the subtlety of Satan. (1 John ii. 20-27.) But where this only medium of communication between heaven and earth is injured or cut off, then the Spirit, to that extent, necessarily ceases to strive with men,—and they are consequently left to the malicious power of the adversary. Such was the case in what are termed "the dark ages," a period characterised by the deepest shades of systematised and consummated iniquity. It was for this period especially that the Spirit of the Lord reserved the awful designation of the "MYSTERY OF INIQUITY," "—as being a manifestation of aggravated guilt and unfaithfulness to a trust from heaven -a development of the real nature and intrinsic tendencies of all iniquity; such as, to the same extent, was never equalled before,— and never, while the world exists, shall be exhibited again. It thus stands out to the combined execration and warning of the universe, by the infallible decision of the Omniscient One,-who alone can determine comparative degrees of guilt from the beginning to the end, as the extreme altitude of permitted |