THE PRESENT STATE OF LAODICEA.

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odious in the sight of the Almighty, against whom our Lord expresses his indignation in language the most alarming, will spew thee out of my mouth."

"I

The present condition of Laodicea is in striking conformity with this rebuke and threatening of God. The city was situated on a hill of moderate height, but of considerable extent. Its ruins attest that it was large, populous, and splendid. There are still to be seen three theatres and a circus,―buildings which served only to inflame the passions and to corrupt the heart by immoral and savage exhibitions of the followers of a crucified Redeemer being exposed to the fury of wild beasts. The site is now utterly desolated, without any inhabitants excepting jackalls, wolves, and foxes. Not a single Christian resides at Laodicea. No Turk has even fixed a residence on this forsaken spot. Infidelity itself must confess that the menaces have been awfully executed. It can boast of no human inhabitant, except occasionally when wandering Turkomans pitch their tents in its spacious amphitheatre. The soil is light and friable, and full of salts generating inflammable matter, and seems to have been undermined by fire and water. Hence it abounds in hot springs, which, after passing under ground from the reservoirs, are found bubbling up everywhere. The nitreous vapour compressed in the cavities, and sublimed by heat or fermentation, often bursts its prison with loud explosions, agitating the atmosphere, and shaking the earth and waters with a violence as extensive as destructive. Hence the district is subject to frequent and fearful earthquakes. Hence, moreover, the pestilential grottoes, which had subterraneous communications with each other, derived their noisome effluvia, and serving as smaller vents to these furnaces, were, it is said

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AN APPEAL TO THE READER.

by Dr. Chandler, regarded as apertures to hell, and as passages for deadly fumes rising up from the fires of Pluto. One or more of these mountains evidently has burnt, and it is apparent that Laodicea has been formed from its bowels. To a country such as this is altogether, how awfully appropriate is the message,-"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot! So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." It was loved, and rebuked, and chastened in vain; and now its tragedy may be told in one short sentence. It has been blotted from the world. Its site has not a single resident inhabitant, neither church nor temple, mosque nor minaret. "He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”

This church was weighed in the balance of the sanctuary by the Son of man walking in the midst of it. Each individual member was approved of according to his character by Him who beheld who were his and who were not his. If then this church fell, or if any Christian within it fell, it was from its own, or his resisting and quenching the Spirit, from choosing other lords than Jesus to have dominion over them, from lukewarmness, deadness, and denial of the faith, and from the wilful rejection of freely offered and dearly purchased grace. But if such were this church and its members then, what are the churches and what are Christians now? Reader, what is your repentance towards God, and what the work of your faith, charity, patience, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance? What is your labour of love, or wherein do you labour at all for his name's sake by whose name ye are called? Is Christ in you the hope of glory, and is your heart purified through