This, too, is practical wisdom, to bring close up to us that which is inevitable, and to act towards it after a manner as though it were but to-morrow when the trumpet might sound. And most significantly does our Lord speak of that "hour." He calls it "the hour." We read of hours that have been big with the fate of nations; hours in which the welfare of millions trembled in the balances; hours in which the die was cast for peace or for war; hours that have been called "crises" in history. But here is the culminating crisis of all, the master, the royal, the august hour that is coming. Every second, every swing of the pendulum, every beat of the heart of time is bringing it nearer; silently, surely, we are drifting along the river of time to the ocean of eternity, and there is nothing to stop the constant flight. We pass on. "Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice." "All that are in the graves,"--by this term is meant, not only all whose bodies are actually in the grave at this time, but all who ever were buried, though their bones may have mingled with the elements, been scattered by the winds, dissolved in the waves, or merged into vegetable forms, all who have lived and have died--all these. All! What a numberless number! Think of the inhabitants of this world at the time of the flood, more numerous then than now when men's numbers are so terribly thinned out by death! Think from the time of the flood onward, of Adam's vast offspring! Nineveh, Babylon, and Chaldea, and Persia, and Greece, and Rome were enormous empires of antiquity. The Parthians and Scythians, and Tartars, and Goths, and Huns in the Middle Ages, what teeming hives of humanity; and our present communities and nations, what a numberless band! Think of Ethiopia and the whole continent of Africa; remember India and Japan and the land of the setting sun; in all lands great tribes of men have come and have gone to rest in their sepulchers. What millions upon millions lie buried in China this day, a country of 400 millions. What innumerable hosts are slumbering in the land of the pyramids, embalmed in Egypt of old. And every one, all who have ever lived of woman born,--not one shall be left in the tomb. _All_,--all the righteous and the wicked; all that were engulfed in the sea; all that slumber in the lap of the earth; all the great and the humble, all the children of luxury and the sons of toil; all the wise and all the foolish; all the beloved and the despised. There shall not be one single individual omitted, nor you, my dear hearer. As surely as you sit here this morning, so surely shall you stand before the Son of Man. You shall not be forgotten; your departed spirit shall have its appointed place, and your body, which once contained it, shall have its place, till, by the power of God, it shall be restored to your spirit again at the sounding of the last trumpet.