The world is going to lose a great many of its votaries next Sabbath.  We give you warning.  There is a great host coming in to stand under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Will you be among them?  It is going to be a great harvest-day.  Will you be among the gathered sheaves?

Some of you have been thinking on this subject year after year.  You have found out that this world is a poor portion.  You want to be Christians.  You have come almost into the kingdom of God; but there you stop, forgetful of the fact that to be almost saved is not to be saved at all.  Oh, my brother, after having come so near to the door of mercy, if you turn back, you will never come at all.  After all you have heard of the goodness of God, if you turn away and die, it will not be because you did not have a good offer.

    “God’s spirit will not always strive
      With hardened, self-destroying man;
    Ye who persist His love to grieve
      May never hear his voice again.”

May God Almighty this hour move upon your soul and bring you back from the husks of the wilderness to the Father’s house, and set you at the banquet, and “put a ring on your hand.”

HOW HE CAME TO SAY IT.

    “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be
    Anathema Maranatha.”—­I COR. xvi:  22.

The smallest lad in the house knows the meaning of all those words except the last two, Anathema Maranatha.  Anathema, to cut off.  Maranatha, at His coming.  So the whole passage might be read:  “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cut off at His coming.”  Well, how could the tender-hearted Paul say that?  We have seen him with tears discoursing about human want, and flushed with excitement about human sorrow; and now he throws those red-hot iron words into this letter to the Corinthians.  Had he lost his patience?  Ok, no.  Had he resigned his confidence in the Christian religion?  Oh, no.  Had the world treated him so badly that he had become its sworn enemy?  Oh, no.  It needs some explanation, I confess, and I shall proceed to show by what process Paul came to the vehement utterance of my text.  Before I close, if God shall give His Spirit, you shall cease to be surprised at the exclamation of the Apostle, and you yourselves will employ the same emphasis, declaring, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”

If the photographic art had been discovered early enough, we should have had the facial proportions of Christ—­the front face, the side face, Jesus sitting, Jesus standing—­provided He had submitted to that art; but since the sun did not become a portrait painter until eighteen centuries after Christ, our idea about the Saviour’s personal appearance is all guess work.  Still, tradition tells us that He was the most infinitely beautiful being that ever walked our small earth.  If His features had been rugged, and His gait had been ungainly,