As much as to say: “Your souls have fallen asleep; you have been in a dark night, not seeing that God would avenge you of all these sins of yours; that God’s eye was on them: you have fallen asleep and forgotten your forefathers’ belief, that God loves law, and order, and justice, and will punish those who break through them. But now the Lord Jesus, the light of the world, is come to awaken you, and to open your eyes to see the truth about this, and to show you that you are in God’s kingdom, and that God commands you to repent, and to obey Him, and do justly and righteously. Therefore awake out of your sleep; give up the works of darkness, those mean and wicked habits which were contrary to the good old laws of your forefathers, and which you were at heart ashamed of, and tried to hide even while you indulged in them. Open your eyes, and see that God is near you, your Judge, your King, seeing through and through your souls, keen and sharp to discern the secret thoughts and intents of the heart, so that all things are naked and open in the sight of Him with whom we have to do.” And so I may say to you, my friends, it is high time for us to awake out of sleep. The people in England, religious as well as others, have fallen asleep of late years too much about this matter. They have forgotten that God is King, that magistrates are God’s ministers. They talk as if laws were meant to be only the device of man’s will, to serve men’s private interests and selfishness; and therefore they have lost very much of their respect for law, and their care to make good laws for the future. And it is high time for us, while all the nations of Europe are tottering and crumbling round us, to awake out of sleep on this matter. We must open our eyes and see where we are. For we are in God’s kingdom. God’s Bible, God’s churches, God’s commandments, and all the solemn old law forms of England witness to us that God is King, set in the throne which judges right; that order and justice, fellow-feeling and public spirit, are His gifts, His likeness, on which He looks down with loving care and protection; and that if we forget that, and begin to fancy that law stands merely by the will of the many, or by the will of the stronger, or even by the will of the wiser—by any will of man in short; we shall end by neither being able to make just laws any more, nor to obey those which we have, by the blessing of God, already. XXVIII. THE EDUCATION OF A HEATHEN. Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise, and extol, and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment; and those that walk in pride He is able to abase.—DANIEL iv. 37. WE read for the first lesson to-day two chapters out of the book of Daniel. Those who love to study their Bibles, have read often, of course, not only these two chapters, but the whole book.