ON every hand is accumulating evidence that the wages of sin is death. Through sin death came into the world in all its varied forms. There are multitudes of immediate causes; but the cause of all causes is sin. The continual breaking of God's law gave us a broken character, a broken constitution; and upon this broken constitution earth's maladies are able to prey at will. In years gone by, an occasional plague would sweep over the country or leave a windrow of its dead around the world, having found in some unsanitary locality a favorable breeding ground; but the great, dreaded malady of to-day—the great white plague—is local to almost all parts of the world, and other diseases which have been dominant only in certain localities are fast taking root, and making for themselves homes everywhere—planting their seeds for a great future harvest. Great precautions are taken to-day in all lands against the spread of the most dreaded diseases; but consumption, bubonic plague, pneumonia, and the grip know no quarantine guards or have gone through them like a modern shell through an old-time frigate of the line. Insanity seems to have learned the passwords of all its enemies, and scuttles their defenses at will. For every foul seed thus sown a score come to harvest to carry on the devastating work. All this is the fruit of sin. It is working out its weakening process in all parts of the earth. Amid the groans of the dying and the anguish of the sick, the fearful work of Satan is speeding to its end in the earth—and that end will come in the midst of the most terrible diseases. The work of sin is making fertile soil of the human family for the "noisome and grievous sores" that shall fall upon both man and beast, when the angels of God are pouring out the vials of His wrath upon an impenitent world. See Revelation 16. When that work of God is in progress, He reminds His children to watch, and to be ready for His coming (verse 15). It will be a sign to God's obedient children that He is at the door. It is blessed to know that even this strong, and increasingly strong, enemy can not triumph over the people of God at that time. The pestilence of those days will not be able to fasten itself upon them; for "He shall deliver them from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. . . . Thou shalt not be afraid . . . for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." Psalm 91. They who will stand in that day must also have passed through a ripening process; but it is a vastly different process—a vastly different experience—from that of which we have been speaking. The one class is ripening for ruin, the other is ripening for the kingdom through the grace and strength and special protection of Heaven. The one has followed its own ways; the other has been submissive and loyal to the expressed will of God, and has put no trust in the horses and chariots of self. Of these two ripening processes all will take their choice. They are doing it now—and the Judge is standing before the door. s.