"Come thou and thy family into the ark,"--what time could be more opportune than this first day of another year of God's grace? Consider the matter, and may it lead you to lay your vow upon God's altar and have your name recorded on the roster of the Church. Amen.
And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works; and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.--_Rev. 20, 11. 12. 15._
We are all acquainted, my beloved, with the verdict that was once pronounced upon King Belshazzar of Babylon,--how, seated one night at a royal banquet, with his princes, his wives and concubines, eating, drinking, and making merry, there suddenly appeared upon the wall of his palace the ghostly fingers of a man's hand tracing in clear and distinct letters the words: "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." When the king saw the mysterious script and surmised its probable meaning, his countenance was changed, the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. The wisest man in his realm was sent for, one Daniel, the Lord's prophet, interprets the words and tells him: "Mene: God has numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Tekel: Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting. Upharsin: Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." Nor was it the space of two hours before the verdict met its fulfillment. Darius, the king of the Medes, by a subterranean passage, dug under the city's walls, broke into the city. Belshazzar was slain that night, and his mighty empire shattered like chaff before the wind.
"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," that is the handwriting which one might appropriately inscribe over the portals of this day. Loving and warning as was the picture which we contemplated on the last Lord's Day, where we observed our Savior riding in royal state, in the City of David, and heard the prophet's prediction: "Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek and sitting upon a colt," just as tremendous and awfully solemn is the account in to-day's Gospel, which presents to us that selfsame King transformed into a judge, His meekness into righteous display, His offers of salvation into sentences of sharpness, justice, and retribution, parceling out to every one, as He did unto Belshazzar at Babylon, the just verdict of his deed. It is Christ's "Second Advent," His coming to judge the quick and the dead, that forms the topic of our present contemplation, and taking up the account read from Revelations, step by step, may God's Holy Spirit make our consideration of it a blessing to your souls. Four things enlist our devotion: _I. The Judge_; _II. the judged_; _III. the books_; _IV. the results_.